


Sand In The Wind

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: it's a dangerous business, going out your door (you never know where you might be swept off to) [1]
Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Canon Suicide, Canon-Typical Racism, Canon-Typical Sexism, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:16:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3148805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kourrem bint Kemail fulfils a dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sand in the Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seori/gifts).



> I would like to say that the character of Kourrem means a great deal to me, and that I did my level best to not make a mess. However, we all have blind spots (... privilege). If I was unintentionally gross, please let me know, so I can correct myself.
> 
> Also, I know I borked the timeline; Neal is older than he should be. But Cass says it works with the story, and I like him too much to change it.

**i.**

                It started when Kourrem was a child. Not in the baby time she couldn’t remember, when she’d still had a mother and father, but after that, when she and Kara and Ishak lived hand-to-mouth, subsisting on fear-driven charity – _we’ve fed you, now leave us alone; don’t curse our horses, our sons, our sword-hands_ : these are the words Kourrem remembers reading from men’s minds – and genuine flashes of kindness from Halef Seif.

 

                Kourrem hated him a little for those flashes of kindness, wishing that he would fear and despise them like the rest of the Bloody Hawk so she could look down on him, too, but mostly he did not register in her early life, which consisted mostly of comforting Kara, trying to keep a leash on her roiling Gift, and ignoring hunger pangs. Oh, and talking to Ishak.

 

                Ishak was strange, even for them. Strange and intense and ambitious, and as he grew getting more and more ideas about being the head of their rag-tag family and asserting his authority over Kara and Kourrem, like a normal man of the tribe. Foolishness, Kara murmured softly, mending his clothes. Idiocy, Kourrem said harshly, kicking his shins.

 

                But later, when Ishak had stamped off with bruised legs and curse-words, Kourrem would have a change of heart and follow him. She would sit on the sand with him and talk, about all the places in the rest of Tortall where the Gifted were valued more. And Ishak would forget his pretended superiority, and his eyes would light up with dreaming of where they could go when they grew up, take Kara with them and find a niche somewhere – in Persopolis, or Port Legann, or even Corus. Even when Kara called Kourrem to help her cook, and when they joined the Voice and felt the battering wave of hostility and anxiety from the rest of the tribe, and when they curled up to sleep in the cold night under inadequate blankets, those dreams would stay with Kourrem and she was filled with a powerful impulse to just _go_ , till every sinew strained to be rid of this patch of desert, this hateful chorus of frightened people.

 

                Yes, that was how it started.

**ii.**

                Kourrem was a child, not a fool. She knew exactly what Alanna and Prince Jonathan got up to that made the men raise their eyebrows and the women smirk behind their veils, muttering soft ribbons of commentary that made Kara blush. Perhaps Kourrem should have been embarrassed, as Kara was. Perhaps she should have lowered her eyes and ducked her head and crept out of sight when the prince appeared, if not out of embarrassment then out of respect for his rank.

 

                Bah, Kourrem gave not a grain of sand for his rank – after all, she had been of a good family once, too; shamans since the desert sea swelled, long before the Contés crawled out of their trees and hills – and she cared nothing about what he did with Alanna, unless it woke her up. Alanna seemed to enjoy it, anyway, and there was clearly an agreement between the two of them, so Kourrem felt strongly that it was none of her business. Kourrem suspected that Alanna’s behaviour was just as improper for a good Tortallan lady as it was for a good Bazhir maiden, but found that she did not care very much; proprieties seemed largely irrelevant to a woman like Alanna. Kara’s attitude suggested that Kourrem ought to be appalled by this, but she was more intrigued than repelled.

 

                So she cornered Prince Jonathan, and demanded that he tell her about Tortall, because Alanna had only travelled so far and tended to be preoccupied with saving people or vanquishing demons when she journeyed. Surprised, he tried to deflect her, but Kourrem had not been an outcast for years for nothing; her persistence could have broken a cavalry charge, let alone one callow, rather conceited prince.  He liked her for her persistence, for her willingness to sit and listen to him ramble about his home and friends on the days when he was exhausted from his training and Alanna was busy. When he left, before the mess of fury and broken hearts that blew up with his – _assumptions_ – and oh, how Kourrem wished that she’d warned Alanna, that she hadn’t taken it for granted that he’d spoken to her – he gave her a set of maps, and promised her a home in Corus and that he would sponsor her to a place as a mage’s student, if she wanted formal qualifications before she went travelling.

 

                “Not that anyone will question your talent,” he added hastily as Kourrem’s dark eyes narrowed, her fingers tightening purposefully on the leather map case. “But – it might be useful. And someone like that could teach you more than I can, more than Alanna can. Alanna’s good, but she’s not a _professional_ mage.”

 

                “Huh,” Kourrem said, only slightly mollified and considering whether to be insulted by this slight to her teacher. She thanked him, and thought very hard about the opportunity he offered her. And every day, she took the maps out of their case, unrolled them and inspected them, planning routes, changing goals, mentally organising practicalities. Sometimes she talked to Alanna about it, and Alanna was as helpful as she could be considering that she was distracted and unhappy.

 

                Kara watched Alanna with sad, knowing eyes, and Kourrem muttered curses on Prince Jonathan’s thick skull and typical Tortallan conceit, did her best to anticipate Alanna’s every whim, and carefully kept her maps out of Alanna’s sight.

**iii.**

                Then Alanna was gone, and Kourrem was trapped, trapped, _trapped_ among a people that still feared her. The men and women of the Bloody Hawk still preferred Kara as a shaman, and made it politely clear to Kourrem that her help wasn’t really wanted. Kara deferred to her, but it was so obvious that Kara knew exactly what to do and meant to do it no matter what Kourrem said that Kourrem never bothered going against her. The school was no use to her; all the teachers, even Umar Komm, let her know that her help wasn’t needed there, either, and ye gods, if Alanna was here she would have words to say about that – but Alanna wasn’t. Kourrem spent her time doing chores just to have something to do, and was never quite as good at them as Kara would have liked; it infuriated Kourrem, to see Kara quietly re-doing everything in the evenings when she was tired and should be resting, but she bit her tongue and said nothing.

 

                She still studied her maps, tracing the careful ink outlines of roads and mountains – _mountains_ ; Alanna had described them, indulging her student’s obvious interest, but Kourrem still couldn’t begin to understand them – the blue washes of even more incomprehensible seas and lakes, and the curiously static Tortallan letters spelling out place-names. Kourrem murmured them under her breath like a spell as she went about her daily work, and smiled like the slice of a knife at those that gave her frightened, uncomprehending looks.

 

                Once, Halef Seif asked to see her maps. She showed them to him, suspicious, ready to snatch them away from him if she had to. He smiled and complimented her on them, asking about her plans, and Kara smiled behind her veil to see someone be kind to her little Kourrem; if only she knew how much Kourrem resented this sweet courtesy of condescension.

 

                Kourrem returned him brusque answers, painfully conscious that he had protected her and Kara and Ishak from the tribe’s fear and that she owed him some kind of politeness, and when he left to speak to Kara – the tribe’s shaman, the tribe’s _only_ shaman; Kourrem knew that those who used to spit at her feet would never want her care, but unobtrusive, forgiving Kara was a different matter – Kourrem bit her lip till it bled and whispered the obscene curse-words Ishak had taught her.

**iv.**

                Alanna came and went again. Ashamed of how she had wasted the chance Alanna had bought for her in Ibn Nazzir’s blood, Kourrem hid from her, and spent the entirety of the visit shredding her heart to pieces over the thought that she had let Alanna down.

 

**v.**

                She knew exactly which was the last cut, the cruellest cut of all, that severed her from the Bloody Hawk, and she knew she should have seen it coming. She was so _clever_ , after all. Little Kourrem. So _clever_. So clever, and just stupid enough not to catch the murmured conversations, the consultations on the tribe’s business, the tender courtesies, the look in Kara’s eyes, the smile on his face...

 

                It hit her like rain. The clouds had been gathering for months, and Kourrem had never spared a glance for the sky, but then it had poured down, hard and stinging as the stones the boys used to throw at her but also cold and drenching, soaking her to the skin in bitter betrayal.

 

                “ _Oh_ ,” she said without meaning to, a half-soundless cry of shock, breaking the soft peace inside the tent.

 

                “Kourrem,” Kara gasped, her hands slipping from Halef Seif’s, and Kourrem stumbled backwards, away from the warm, muted light and the radiance in Kara’s face and her fingers laid trustingly in Halef Seif’s. Away from the glow in their eyes. Away from the tranquil companionship around them that made a mockery of Alanna and Prince Jonathan’s vibrancy.

 

                Kourrem turned and ran out into the desert, stumbling on the sand and blinded by the salt in her eyes, and when she was so far from the tribe’s tents that they were merely dots in her sight, she ripped off her veil and opened her mouth and howled, and a wind rose up and howled with her.

 

                The grains of sand stung her face and hands, but not as much as her tears did.

 

**vi.**

                When Kourrem went back, she walked with a sandstorm on her heels. She barely remembered to kill the biting wind before it ripped up the tents, but at least she did it – and the fact that the sand died at her feet added a little to the image she knew she presented, to the bitter young woman with her head unveiled and her eyes full of acid. She let the stares follow her, kept her back straight and her chin up, all the way back to her tent, its front flap ostentatiously pinned up so she could see inside. Kara stepped out, her eyes reddened, and held out her hands.

 

                “Kourrem,” she said softly, her voice in agony.

 

                “Kara,” Kourrem said, as kindly as she could, and dodged her hands but kissed her cheek. She could afford to be nice to Kara, closer than a blood-sister: her escape route was already printed on her mind, a work of art like her prized maps, her trail marked out in delicate dotted ink.  “What’s for supper?”

 

**vii.**

                The connection with the Voice was the same as always. Tonight of all nights, Kourrem would have liked to skip it, but even the idea of doing so was beyond her understanding; the habit was too strong.

 

                She breathed slowly, quietly, meditating the way Alanna had taught her to-

 

                - _Kourrem?_

 

                Her eyes snapped open, but she didn’t lose the connection.

 

                _Yes. It’s me._

 

                Kourrem shook up her thoughts and laid them out, choosing the one that made the most sense and contained the fewest of Ishak’s appalling words, and projecting it to Prince Jonathan. _I wasn’t aware the Voice communicated personally._

 

                _It’s rare._ A pause. _Sometimes I like to offer... a solution. Or advice. Or a bit of comfort. Anyone un-Gifted would take it for their own thoughts._

 

                _I hope you don’t connect with Alanna like this,_ was all she could think of, though she added a belated _your highness._

_I’m the Voice, Kourrem, not a prince. Not right now._ She assumed that he was avoiding her earlier statement, until she heard a reluctant _Alanna is out of my reach._

                                 

                She said nothing to that, statue-still with her bright eyes open and staring into the heart of the fire, until she remembered something. Prince Jonathan waited, relentless as the sun, but also more patient than Kourrem had ever suspected him of being. _You offered me a chance to come to Corus, once._

 

                _The offer stands_ , Prince Jonathan told her.

 

                Kourrem struggled for words, and found some. _Thank you._

 

**viii.**

                “How can you go? You’re leaving everything behind, Kourrem. Your life, your loom, your tribe, me – and you are head shaman!”

 

                “In name only.”

 

                “Kourrem!”

 

                “It’s true. More than true.”

 

                “Well –“

 

                “You will be fine without me, and there’s an end to it.”

 

**ix.**

                Prince Jonathan gave her Raoul of Goldenlake, also known as Raoul of the Sandrunners – but probably only if you were a Bazhir  - and his recruiting party as an escort. Raoul was a foot taller than Kourrem, and had no idea what to do with her. For one thing, he persisted in referring to her as Mistress Kourrem. For another, he kept trying to help her into the saddle.

 

                “It is just a _horse_ ,” Kourrem said early one morning, losing her temper more often as they left the desert behind. Lightning cracked ominously in the clouds overhead. “I am a Bazhir. I may be a woman, but I can still ride a horse, and no, I do not need stupid –“ she broke into her own language for a few stress-relieving moments, making the Bazhir recruits gasp and grin in equal measure, before returning to Common – “northern _men_ trying to throw me at the saddle!”

 

                Raoul stood still, looking pole-axed. Kourrem stopped for breath, and glared at him, despite the fact that it was giving her a crick in her neck. “You were friends with the Woman Who Rides Like A Man. Surely you understand this!”

 

                Raoul opened and closed his mouth, as if thinking better of what he was about to say, and then shook his head and raised his hands, admitting defeat.

 

                Kourrem sniffed, and leapt into the saddle.

 

**x.**

                Corus was large and noisy, and a man tried to pick-pocket Kourrem within minutes of their arrival.  She stuck unconsciously close to Raoul’s side as he pointed out the major temples and city buildings, the Gift itching under her skin, and wished for Alanna to explain the city to her from an inhabitant’s point of view.

 

                “... And here’s the Palace,” Raoul said, as they approached a very large set of wrought-iron gates and an equally titanic building in grey stone. “We shouldn’t really be going in this way, since it’s the main gate, but there was a small accident with a couple of carts and several pints of scrumpy at the other big gate and the others are too small to take a big party like this.”

 

                Kourrem nodded, and resisted the temptation to wrap her scarf more tightly around her head, imitating the face-veils she had stopped wearing after seeing Kara and Halef together. The scarf attracted less unwanted attention than the face-veil had, but it still felt foreign to Kourrem. “What is scrumpy?”

 

                “Well, you know cider?”  


                Kourrem nodded cautious assent. Raoul had had to explain that earlier.

 

                “Scrumpy is cider, but stronger.”

 

                He sent the group of recruits and the Own soldiers with them somewhere else, and Kourrem controlled the fierce burst of anxiety she felt at leaving the only other Bazhir she had seen for weeks behind.  She glanced at Raoul, and he grinned back at her.

 

                “Come on – this way.”

 

                They dismounted, and handed off their horses to grooms waiting to take them; then Raoul led her along a path alongside the main bulk of the Palace buildings, and then through a small wrought-iron gate into a courtyard garden. It was filled with small trees Kourrem just about recognised as cherry and apple, set in islands of pale flowers and punctuating patches of lush green grass segmented by sandy paths; it was noticeably cooler than the heat of the city, perhaps because at that hour it didn’t catch the sun, and it smelled clean and fresh. A couple of simple stone benches stood in strategic places against the walls, framed by clematis.

 

                Kourrem forgot herself so far as to gasp.

 

                Raoul grinned. “Jon _said_ you’d like it.” He pointed at the fountain, which just made Kourrem’s eyes go wider; she’d wondered what that magical sound of playing water was, but had never considered the possibility of a fountain, which she’d heard of but never seen and had privately dismissed as a stupid thing to do with scarce water. “The water’s drinkable, if you’re thirsty.”

 

                Kourrem moved slowly forward, sat on the broad lip of the fountain, and dipped her hands in the water, stifling a gasp. It was cool and clean as crystal, and quickly she rinsed her hands and took several gulps of refreshing water. She shot a meaningful look at Raoul, who turned his back to her and tactfully pretended to be examining a tree, and then unpinned her scarf in order to wash her face without getting the fabric wet.

 

                When she had replaced her scarf, she turned back to Raoul. “Whose is this?”

 

                “Whose is what?” He looked back at her. “Oh- the garden. Well, when King Roald was Duke of Conté, when King Jasson was still alive, he had rooms around here. When he married Queen Lianne – Lady Lianne of Naxen – he had this garden made for her.”

 

                Kourrem prevented her jaw from dropping with extreme difficulty. “I’m sitting in the Queen’s garden?”

 

                “Yes, but...” Raoul hesitated. “She’s too ill to come down here any more. She’s very – delicate, and doesn’t go much beyond her own rooms. Mostly it’s Jon who comes here – he gave me a key to the gate – and the Naxens, sometimes.”

 

                 “Oh.” Kourrem folded her hands in her lap, still perched on the lip of the fountain.

 

                “We’re just waiting for Jon,” Raoul added. “He said he would come down here and bring Duke Baird.”

 

                Kourrem digested this in silence. A letter had met her at Persopolis, telling her about Duke Baird of Queenscove, the Chief Healer, who had agreed to take her on as a student. A family man, married with three sons; a mage of impeccable prestige, and most importantly, a long-term friend of Alanna’s, very willing to sponsor her former student. He had sounded nice, and Kourrem remembered hearing his name from Alanna, but she was not a very trusting young woman, and now that she was here, she was nervous.

 

                “Kourrem!”

 

                Kourrem recognised Prince Jonathan’s commanding tones, and stood abruptly and bowed as formally as she knew how. Alanna had mentioned ‘curtseying’ once in dark tones, but Kourrem hadn’t the faintest idea what it was. He hastened across the grass towards her, and grasped her hands; a tall, rangy man with kind eyes followed him. “You look well,” he said approvingly. “Tired, but well. And I see you’ve left off your face-veil.”

 

                “It seemed practical,” Kourrem said stiffly, managing a small smile.

 

                “It really cut down on the number of people she turned mute for disrespecting the tribes,” Raoul added helpfully, strolling across for a manly round of back-slapping and other incomprehensible northern greetings.

 

                Prince Jonathan grinned. “Tell me, Kourrem, how do you like Corus?”

 

                “It is very noisy,” Kourrem answered, eye caught by a glitter of something vaguely green and slightly off in the background.

 

                Both Prince Jonathan and Raoul laughed uproariously. The kind-eyed man smiled slightly.

 

                “I think you’ll like it better when you are used to it,” he observed, and bowed courteously to Kourrem, who bowed in response. “It is an honour to meet you, Mistress Kourrem.”

                               

                “Likewise, your Grace.” Kourrem wondered if she should speak up about the flicker in the air, which was getting closer and closer, and then a small boy exploded out of the flicker and hit Duke Baird in the back of the knees.

 

                “ _Got you, Da_!”

 

                Raoul burst out laughing again, and Prince Jonathan grinned.

 

                “Oh, Neal,” Duke Baird sighed, recovering his balance, and prised his son off his calves. “I told you I was busy. Make your bow to Mistress Kourrem.”

 

                The small boy, who had bright green eyes and messy hair the same colour as the Duke’s, flopped forward in an approximation of a bow and then stared unapologetically at Kourrem. “Whozit?”

 

                “I am Kourrem bint Kemail of the tribe of the Bloody Hawk,” Kourrem said, bowing yet again and then staring back at the small boy. “It is very pleasant to meet you, Neal of Queenscove. May I say that I was most impressed by your invisibility spell?”

 

                The small boy stared at her for another small moment, and then tugged imperatively on his father’s breeches. “I like her,” he announced. “She’s nice.”

**xi.**

                “Kou-rrem,” Neal whined, bouncing on the balls of his feet, “I wanna _play_.”

 

                “Go away and play with your sister. I’m busy.” Kourrem squinted at the dissected sheep’s heart before her, and continued her painstaking diagram.

 

                “She’s too _little_.”

 

                “Then go away and play with your brothers.” Kourrem prodded the heart with a scalpel, the better to expose a valve, and then added another stroke of ink to her diagram. It was almost like drawing a map, she reflected, except that no cartographer ever had Neal hanging off their knee, trying to persuade them to come out and play.

 

                “Kourrem, pleeeease...”

 

                “No,” Kourrem said firmly, finishing her diagram, signing it and shaking drying sand over it before wrapping the heart carefully up for disposal.

 

**xii.**

                “We are treating the _Queen_?” Having got accustomed to Duke Baird’s preferred speed of movement, which involved striding around the Palace with legs roughly twice as long as her own, Kourrem did not stop to be amazed but scuttled behind him, carrying a large basket of medicines and Duke Baird’s bag of instruments.

 

                “Of course.” Duke Baird sounded amused by her astonishment. “I am Chief Healer.”

 

                “But,” Kourrem said. “What about me?”

 

                “You are my student,” the Duke said calmly. “I trust you. More importantly, her majesty trusts you.”

 

                “Why?” Kourrem blurted. “Most Tortallans...”  she freed a hand, and indicated her skin.

 

                “The Queen doesn’t take that into account.” Duke Baird stopped. They were taking one of his favourite shortcuts, which was very quiet. “Think about it, Kourrem. You were Alanna’s student. Before Alanna became controversial, she was the prince’s squire and his right-hand man, and even before that she saved his life when he was dying of the Sweating Sickness. Alanna also killed the man who tried to murder her, no matter how difficult Queen Lianne finds coming to terms with what Duke Roger did. Alanna’s loyalty to Jonathan has never been in question, and as her student – and one who is _also_ conspicuously loyal to Jonathan – that transfers to you.”

 

                Kourrem was silent.

 

                “Is that understood?”

 

                Kourrem nodded.

 

**xiii.**

                “Hey, girl!”

 

                Kourrem straightened her back and ignored the shouter, sweeping away from him with the Queenscove footman a respectful pace behind, carrying the supplies Duke Baird had sent her out for.

 

                The sound of running footsteps made her instincts tense, and she was forced to halt as the shouter slid past Owen and confronted her. She glared at him, noting his familiar looks with some surprise: flaming red hair and violet eyes. There was a strong resemblance to Alanna, although this man was taller, thinner and dressed more ostentatiously.

 

                “Don’t you stop when you’re called?” he demanded, out of breath.

 

                “I was not addressed,” Kourrem said harshly, looking down her nose at him in a manner calculated to depress any pretensions he might possibly have. “Might I have the... pleasure of knowing who speaks?”

 

                He frowned. “Don’t you recognise me? You were my sister’s student, weren’t you? Well, that’s what they’re saying, anyway.” He bowed so floridly that it was almost an insult. “Lord Thom of Trebond, at your service.”

 

                “Kourrem bint Kemail,” Kourrem responded, with a tiny, glacial nod. “Under no circumstances do I answer to ‘girl’.”

 

                She sidestepped him and moved on.

 

**xiv.**

                The Queen settled on the rich cushions and blankets that had been brought out to her, and looked around at the garden. “I had forgotten how beautiful this is.”

 

                “It’s very lovely,” Kourrem agreed, kneeling beside her and taking her pulse.

 

                “This was... a good idea.” The Queen smiled at her, and Kourrem couldn’t stop herself smiling back. Prince Jonathan got his looks from his father, but his smile was definitely his mother’s.    

 

                “I’m glad, your majesty,” Kourrem said quietly. She poured the day’s dose of medicine into a goblet and held it to Queen Lianne’s lips; the older woman took the goblet from her, made a small, lady-like face at it and tossed it neatly back.

 

                Lady Cythera sat down beside them, tucking delicate primrose skirts under her, and offered a plate of raspberries to the Queen, who thanked her with a smile and took some. Kourrem halved a soft white roll studded with nuts, buttered it, and added a large slice of honey-cured ham and a generous dollop of mustard, which she held out to her patient.

 

                Queen Lianne looked at it and smiled faintly. “Really, Kourrem?”

 

                “Really, your majesty,” Kourrem said imperatively. “Your majesty knows how Duke Baird will scold me if I do not ensure that your majesty eats a proper lunch.” Lady Cythera pressed her lips together, hiding a smile.

 

                Queen Lianne gave her a fishy look. Kourrem returned a blank one.

 

                Queen Lianne accepted the sandwich and began to nibble daintily at it, and Lady Cythera turned away, concealing her laughter while also unearthing the bottle of peach juice that the servants had brought. She poured three glasses, and handed them around. “Kourrem, there are dates in the basket with the blue trimming.”

 

                Kourrem smiled, knowing that Lady Cythera would have requested those for her. She rifled through the basket. “Thank you, Lady Cythera.”

 

                There passed some relatively quiet eating and small talk, during which Lady Cythera coaxed and Kourrem bullied the Queen into eating a decent meal. Then, after an interlude in which Kourrem tried to recall and explain a dish Kara had made that she thought the Queen might happily eat and that would build her strength, the Queen sat back on her pillows and sighed.

 

                “Tell me, Kourrem,” she said, as if just chatting. “A foreign court, a new teacher, hundreds if not thousands of new people, some hostile to you... It must be difficult.”

 

                “I grow accustomed,” Kourrem said calmly, wiping her sticky fingers on a napkin. Lady Cythera watched them carefully, like duellers. “There is much to learn.”

 

                “You are very observant,” the Queen complimented her.

 

                “Thank you, your majesty.”

 

                “Perhaps you would not be averse to sharing a few of them with me.” The Queen met her eyes, soft grey gaze guileless as a maiden. “On, for instance, Thom of Trebond.”

 

                Kourrem folded her hands in her lap and eyed her patient.

 

                “You are perfectly safe to speak here,” the Queen assured her. “To me, and to Cythera.”

 

                Kourrem examined them both in silence, then licked her lips and spoke. “Thom of Trebond is like an untempered sword. Sharp – but brittle. He is also like the boy who forged that sword. Proud of his achievement – and unaware of its flaws.”

 

                The Queen nodded gently. “Sir Alexander of Tirragen.”

 

                “An unknown quantity to everyone at Court. With the possible exception of your brother, your majesty.”

 

                The Queen made a soft acknowledging noise. “Lady Delia.”

 

                “An unlucky woman making the best of what she has in a difficult world, and consequently amoral, manipulative, and charming.”

 

                “Princess Josiane.”

 

                Kourrem hesitated. Josiane’s mother had been Queen Lianne’s friend, she knew.

 

                “Speak the truth,” Queen Lianne said, eyes hard as flint. “Josiane’s mother died of a miscarriage brought on by a beating, and the Goddess’ Court could not convict the king.”

 

                “The princess will be mad. Perhaps not tomorrow, or the next day, but the seeds are there, and... seeds grow, your majesty.”

 

                “Evidently,” Queen Lianne said dryly, waving a hand at the garden around them. “Alanna of Trebond.”

 

                Kourrem met the Queen’s eyes. “Courageous, loyal, god-touched, brave, and heartbroken. She would never have been the right wife for Prince Jonathan, but she found that out the hard way. His highness tried to choose her destiny for her; he forgot, or perhaps he never knew, that Alanna is the captain of her own soul. But he’ll need her loyalty, one day. And her sword arm. I know you are rooted in the traditions of Tortall, your majesty – but in my opinion, there is no finer knight living, and your son will never have a more loyal vassal.”

 

                 Queen Lianne was very still. “You seek to teach me, Kourrem.”

 

                Kourrem felt a prickle at the base of her spine, and was reminded that Prince Jonathan got the Gift from both sides of his family. She stared into the Queen’s eyes – like mist now, intangible. “No, your majesty. I have told you nothing that you don’t already know.”

 

                Queen Lianne lay back, looking meditatively up at the bright sky. “Can you read the truth from my mind, Kourrem?”

 

                “No,” Kourrem said flatly, and nibbled a dried fig. “I’ve never tried.”

 

                “Small mercies,” Queen Lianne said softly. “The world is full of small mercies.” She toyed with the tassel on one of the cushions. “Remember that, you two. When I am gone.”

 

                Kourrem’s eyes shot to Cythera’s. Tears shone in the lady-in-waiting’s face.

 

                “That will not be for many years now, your majesty,” Kourrem said calmly. “And to that end, I think I’ll have someone bring your tea out here – if it is to your majesty’s liking. The fresh air is good for you.”

 

**xv.**

                “Kourrem,” Lady Cythera said, erupting into Kourrem’s rooms.

 

                “Lady Cythera – an unexpected honour.” Kourrem sucked the blood from her finger where she had stabbed it with her scarf pin, and sent a glimmer of saffron Gift to mend it. “A _very_ unexpected honour.”

 

                Lady Cythera winced as she closed the door behind her. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t realised.”

 

                “It’s all right.” Kourrem pinned her scarf to her hair, and then turned to face Lady Cythera. “How can I help?”

 

                Lady Cythera was silent for a moment, her hands twisting in the rose pink material of her gown. “I don’t think you can.” She raised her face to meet Kourrem’s eyes. “Where can we go that we won’t be overheard?”

 

                Kourrem blinked at her for a few seconds, and then led the way to Queen Lianne’s garden, which was deserted.  She had no idea what Lady Cythera wanted, but she seemed to be sincere, so it was undoubtedly reasonably important; as an afterthought, she pulled a piece of string from her pocket and tied a few knots in it to raise some elementary wards that would prevent their being overheard. “What’s happened, my lady?”

 

                “I wish you would call me Cythera,” Lady Cythera said faintly, and sat down on the edge of the fountain, trailing her fingers in its clear water. “You recall what the Queen said to us.”

 

                “The world is full of small mercies. Remember that, you two, when I am dead and gone,” Kourrem recited, increasingly concerned. She hadn’t thought the queen prone to spontaneous premonitions, but perhaps Cythera knew better.

 

                Cythera nodded. “That morning, when I went into her rooms to wake her, the air smelt of vervain.”

 

                Kourrem stilled, and wondered at the queen’s courage – that she had lit a fire and burnt vervain on it so as to cast into the future, seeking the means or timing of her own demise, knowing it to be close enough that such a prediction would be accurate. “Vervain.”

 

                Cythera nodded again, and stared at a cherry tree without seeing it. “I think she knows something that we don’t.”

               

                Kourrem sat down by Cythera, feeling a sudden and unexpected comradeship with the other woman. “She will never tell us what it is,” she observed practically.

 

                “No.” Cythera sighed, and tipped her head back, looking up at the sky. “We’ll just have to find out.”


	2. Chapter 2

**xvi.**

                “But I don’t see why you have to – look, Cythera, it’s a scandal, but he’ll hardly – he’s just rash – Alanna’s just like him. He won’t follow through. And anyway, she’ll be asleep at this hour! Why do you have to wake her? She’s just Baird’s apprent-“

 

                “Shut up, Gary! Kourrem! _Kourrem_!”

 

                Kourrem flung a scarf over her hair and wrenched the door to her rooms open. “I am no longer asleep or an apprentice, Sir Gareth. Lady Cythera, is the sky falling in?”

 

                “No, but it might as well be.” Lady Cythera was trembling, and she began to cry as she spoke to Kourrem, who swore and forcibly dragged the pair of them into her room; there was no point creating more of a scandal than necessary.

 

                “Speak quietly,” she said peremptorily, snapping her fingers at a candelabra on her desk, which lit. “Neal sleeps next door and he’s disgustingly inquisitive.”

 

                “All that’s happened, Mistress Kourrem,” Sir Gareth said, holding out exasperated hands, “is that Thom of Trebond’s accepted a bloody stupid challenge from Lady Delia.”

 

                “He says,” Cythera put in, her eyes shining with tears, “that he can do anything Denmarie the Earthshaker did. He can raise the dead. Kourrem, you remember what I told you.”

 

                “I’m not in the habit of forgetting,” Kourrem said, tying her robe over her nightgown more tightly.

 

                “I think this is... Well, it’s not quite, not yet, I don’t think. But it’s the start. I’m sure it is.”

 

                “I can’t follow a word you’re saying,” Sir Gareth said, frustrated.

 

                “That can’t be a novel experience,” Kourrem said tartly. “Turn around.”

 

                Sir Gareth spluttered, but turned. Kourrem plaited her hair roughly, and arranged the scarf over it.

 

                “It’s not as if he’ll actually do it,” Sir Gareth said exasperatedly to the wall-hanging Duchess Wilina had given Kourrem to brighten up her room.

 

                “You are wrong. He will do it, and someone must stop him. You may turn back.” Kourrem pulled her boots on quickly. “Kindly escort Lady Cythera to her rooms. Lady Cythera, try not to panic. He won’t do it tonight, I’m almost certain.”

 

                “D’you really mean to run around the Palace at this time of night in that assortment of clothes?” Sir Gareth said, astonished.

 

                Lady Cythera closed her eyes. “She does, Gary.” She got up, and laid her hand on his arm. “Take me home.”

 

                “Go carefully,” Kourrem said, igniting a ball of fire before her face. “Lady Cythera, I will see you tomorrow.”

 

                She saw them on their way, then slipped out of her rooms and set off to Thom of Trebond’s rooms. Finding them required a certain amount of guesswork, but was not as difficult as she had anticipated, and when she knocked his shouted “Go away!” confirmed that he was there.

 

                “No,” she said, voice hard.

 

                “I’m not opening this door to you, whoever you are!”

 

                “You are if you like it intact,” Kourrem assured him. “On my count. Three. Two-“

 

                The door burst open, and Thom of Trebond gawped down at his visitor.  He was dressed for a ball, and to judge from the redness of his face he’d been in a fine temper sometime recently. “You. What do you want?” His lip curled. “I suppose you’ve heard about tonight?”

 

                “I have,” Kourrem said coolly. “And I came to tell you two things.”

 

                He leaned against the doorjamb, and smiled insolently. “Oh? What are they?”

 

                “Firstly: can is not should. Secondly: don’t do anything your sister will regret.” She smiled herself. “If you hurt the woman who freed me, Thom of Trebond –“

 

                “What, you’ll kill me?” His face hardened. “I think you’ll find-“

 

                “- _your life will not be worth living_.”

 

**xvii.**

                “It’s All Hallows’ Eve,” Neal said, pulling the most ghoulish face he could and waving his hands. Graeme rolled his eyes. “The night of ghosties and ghoulies and eeeeeeeeerie things!”

 

                “Don’t be childish,” Graeme, Neal’s oldest brother, said with dignity. Kourrem raised an eyebrow at him.

 

                “Tell’s a story, Kourrem,” Neal said, flopping into Kourrem’s lap. “Pleeeeease.”

 

                She ruffled his hair. “A scary story?”

 

                Graeme began to look interested.

 

                “Yeah!” Neal rolled away from her, and propped his elbows on the floor, staring owlishly at her. “ _Scary_ story.”

 

                “Hmm.”  Kourrem thought for a moment, and then closed her eyes and drew glimmering outlines in the air; two girls and a boy. “Once, in a day gone by, there were three children who lived in the desert. They were cursed with powers that no-one understood, so they were outcasts, living from night to day on the edge of their tribe.” A small mass of tents shimmered into existence; the children hovered on its outside. “In this tribe, there was an evil man who had great power, and often and often he tried to have them killed, but luckily there were those who argued against him, and the children survived to adulthood... the youngest was even older than _you_ , Graeme.”

 

                Graeme, who had just turned nine and was very pleased with himself, blushed.

 

                “And then one day a woman came to the tribe.” A miniature likeness of Alanna rode into the mass of tents. “She was a very brilliant fighter and a mage, and she protected the children without bloodshed for a little while; but she was also running, running from the memory of a great victory over another evil man. Unknown to her, this memory had followed her, and it found a home in the diseased mind of the children’s persecutor...”

 

                “Whassa persecutor?” Neal asked, kicking his heels idly in the air and accidently walloping his brother Talin.

 

                A high-pitched buzzing began in the back of Kourrem’s mind, but she shook her head and ignored it.  “It’s someone who attacks you and hunts you down. The evil man of the tribe went out into the desert, and the warped demon inside his head led him to a powerful sword that contained even more of the wickedness of the man the woman-warrior had conquered. He brought this powerful sword back, and tried to destroy the tribe... and then...”

 

                The high-pitched buzzing had grown. Kourrem’s vision fuzzed. She blinked hard. “And then...” she repeated, but her tongue was thick and dry.

 

                “Ow,” Talin whimpered, clutching his head.

 

                “Kou-rrem,” Neal whined. “My head hurts.”

 

                “I,” Kourrem said, blinking again. The Gift-driven illusions dissipated as she lost control, and Neal and Talin began to cry. Graeme had jumped up and was looking frantically from his brothers to his father’s student.

 

                “Graeme,” Kourrem said with difficulty as Neal screwed up his face and keened in agony.  “Your- father. Duke Baird. Find-“

 

                She struggled to get up, and collapsed back onto the floor, her ears ringing. Her head fell back onto the hard wooden floor with a thump, and she passed out.

 

**xviii.**

                Kourrem’s eyes blinked open and focussed fuzzily on Lady Cythera. “I wasn’t enough, was I?” she croaked. “He brought _him_ back. Duke Roger.”

 

                Lady Cythera looked down at her lap, then helped Kourrem to sit up and held a cup to her lips. “Yes, he did,” she said, very quietly.

 

                Kourrem digested this, then lifted a hand – all her muscles felt like slack thread – and tried to conjure a flame.  To her shock and not inconsiderable fear, nothing rose from her fingers, and a sharp pain lanced through her temples. She swore horribly in her own tongue, and let her hand fall. “The power he must have needed – he has to have drained the entire _city_ –”

 

                Lady Cythera nodded. “I imagine so. He certainly wiped out the palace. Every mage here is laid up, exhausted. The younger ones have taken it hardest, especially those with a strong Gift. Neal is still unconscious.” She picked up a clay beaker. “Which reminds me. You _must_ drink this, you _must_ stay in bed, and you must _not_ use your Gift.”

 

                 Kourrem wrinkled her nose, but took the medicine and threw it back. It tasted foul, salty and sweet and thin like blood, and she swore again, partly with distaste for the medicine and partly to expiate some of the seeping horror that was coming over her. For as long as she could remember, her Gift had been her constant companion; mostly a nuisance, sometimes a joy, often the only weapon available to her. And Thom had _taken_ it from her, and she felt bereft, and consequently furious. If he hadn’t been Alanna’s brother, Kourrem would have torn his guts out and fed them to the city pigeons.

 

                “The bastard. The _bastard_ ,” she said angrily, ignoring Lady Cythera’s instinctive wince. “I wish Alanna was here.”

 

                Lady Cythera was still for a moment, and Kourrem watched her to see her reaction to Alanna’s name, which was so rarely spoken at Court.

 

                “Me too,” Lady Cythera murmured, so softly it was almost inaudible. “Me too.”

 

                Kourrem lay back against her pillows and glowered up at the ceiling, clenching her fists tightly. She was as angry as she’d ever been, but not so much as a stray breeze lifted the corners of her blanket, let alone the raging whirlwinds she had raised as a child.

 

                Thom of Trebond had left her defenceless and brought his sister’s enemy down upon them all, and for the first time since Kourrem had come to Corus, she was really frightened.

 

**xix.**

                “Perhaps he will prove himself... a good man, now,” the Queen whispered as Lady Cythera and Kourrem made her more comfortable in her bed and arranged the windows and curtains so that the slightest whisper of fresh air and autumn sunlight came in. “A second chance...”

 

                “Perhaps,” Duke Baird said, offering the Queen a small smile and a flask of something sweet-smelling. The Queen pulled a face at it.

 

                “Not another of your potions, Baird. I had almost rather submit to Kourrem’s scoldings.”

 

                Duke Baird smiled. “My student scolds you, cousin?”

 

                “So politely that I cannot take offense,” the Queen said dryly. “Baird, really – I feel quite faint.”

 

                “It is necessary, cousin,” Duke Baird said firmly. “In the present climate.”

 

                The Queen’s grey eyes sharpened. “I think you don’t speak of the weather.”

               

                “It is remarkably fine,” the duke allowed. “For autumn.”

 

                “I think so as well. And I am _glad_ that my nephew is returned.” Queen Lianne’s chin was up, her slim hands stiff on the bedspread and her shoulders straight, as if she hadn’t suffered a serious relapse in the wake of All Hallows’ Eve. “Death, however temporary, will have taught him the error of his ways. I am certain he is a loyal subject now – as loyal as you once told me Sir Alanna is, Mistress Kourrem, _if not more so_.”

 

                “I am sure their faith to the crown is indeed incomparable, your majesty,” Kourrem said evenly, smothering a smoking brazier, “but I cannot see what it has to do with a concoction to reduce the inflammation in your lungs.”

 

                The Queen laughed, a harsh edge to it from all her coughing. “See how she lessons me, cousin?”

 

                “Quite,” Duke Baird said, with a smile, “and see how depressingly right she is.” He held out the cup again, and Queen Lianne took it.

 

                “I notice,” she said when she had finished it, “you’ve sent Wilina and the children away.”

 

                “Wilina sent herself away. Home to Haryse, as much as anything else. ” Duke Baird corked the flask and put the rest of the mixture away.  “She will be confined in two weeks’ time, and wishes to spend the time with her mother.”

 

                “My congratulations,” the Queen said, and smiled. “In advance.”

 

                “It is certainly a happy event.”

 

                “Why aren’t you with her?”

 

                Kourrem and Lady Cythera blinked in stereo. That was unusually blunt from the Queen.

 

                “Because I am Chief Healer,” Duke Baird informed her, “and my place is with you.” Kourrem tucked a few more oddments into the Duke’s leather and canvas medicine bag and slung it over her shoulder before scooping up her own basket and waiting. There was a brief pause, in which Lady Cythera fidgeted at the edge of a curtain.

 

                The Queen’s elegant hands shifted restlessly. She laid them flat on the bedspread and pressed them down. “Well? What’s your verdict?”

 

                The Duke appeared to think for a moment, then linked his hands behind his back. “It is nothing that was not expected, cousin, but it is... accelerated. You are frailer, now.”

 

                The Queen breathed out softly, and it sounded like a last breath. Lady Cythera flinched, and Kourrem’s knuckles whitened on the handle of her basket.

 

                “You still have good years left to you,” the Duke told her. “But I advise that you keep healers with you at all times. There are some mages among your ladies, I believe.”

 

                The Queen nodded. “How well trained, though...”

 

                “Send them to me. It is no matter.”

 

                Kourrem coughed tactfully, and both the Queen and Duke Baird looked at her. “In the meantime, your majesty, your grace – if your grace can spare me... I would be honoured to assist.” She shut her mouth with a snap, reeling at the very thought of what she had just said, pinning herself down to serve a dying queen, a dying _northern_ queen. But – she respected Queen Lianne, northerner or not. And then there was the question of her debt to Prince Jonathan, which was deeper than Kourrem cared to think of.

 

                “Come here, child,” Queen Lianne said, and she sounded more interested than she had been all morning. Kourrem laid down her basket and Duke Baird’s bag, and went over to the bed.

 

                “Your majesty.”

 

                “I think you can look me in the eye, Kourrem,” Queen Lianne said gently.

 

                Kourrem met her eyes.

 

                There was a long silence.

 

                “Can you spare her, Baird?” the Queen asked, looking away. Kourrem shut her eyes in relief; no-one had focussed so much attention on her for as long as she could remember, and it was disconcerting.

 

                “For a while – I think so. If she keeps up her studies, and she is very diligent.”

 

                “Then I think I shall accept your kind offer, Kourrem.”

 

                Kourrem caught her eye again. “Your majesty does me more honour than I deserve.”

 

                The Queen’s lips twitched. “Her majesty has very rarely been guilty of that.”

 

**xx.**

                “So you are Thom’s little Bazhir enemy,” Duke Roger said, fascinating blue eyes glittering down at her.

 

                Kourrem fought blankness onto her face. “I am acquainted with Lord Thom, yes, your grace; and yes, your grace, I am Bazhir; and yes, your grace, I am a little shorter than the average.”

 

                Duke Roger laughed. “A witty child.”

 

                “I am glad your grace thinks so.” Kourrem changed her grip on her basket; her hands had become unexpectedly slippery.  “Although I am, in fact, of age. Was there anything in particular your grace required? I have an appointment I should keep.”

 

                “With my aunt. I know. You are very good to her.”

 

                “I am Queen Lianne’s lady.” Kourrem felt the Gift crackle anxiously underneath her skin, and wondered what Ishak would have made of this northern monster. Probably he would have tried to kill it, and been killed in his turn. “Loyal in all things.”

               

                “I’ve been led to believe that the Bazhir weren’t capable of that, not when it came to northerners.”

               

                “Your informant was wrong.” Kourrem glared at the medallion on the duke’s chest, which glittered and sparkled and made her head ache with keeping off its compulsion. “And I am _late_. Your grace.”

 

**xxi.**

                Kourrem stepped softly out of the room, and met Lady Cythera’s eyes. Queen Lianne’s favourite lady-in-waiting sat on  a bench against the opposite wall, and as she saw Kourrem shake her head slightly her despairing face crumpled.

 

                “No,” Lady Cythera sobbed, bending in half as if someone had punched her. “No. Kourrem, _please..._ ”

 

                “I’m sorry,” Kourrem said, and meant it. She cupped Lady Cythera’s face in her exhausted hands. “There was nothing to be done, and it was as painless as Duke Baird and I could make it.”

 

                “I know.” Tears poured thick and fast down the older woman’s face, and Kourrem fished for some kind of handkerchief or a bandage or _something_ , but she had no pockets in this dress and her apron pocket was empty and bloodied with the queen’s last hacking breaths. “Oh, _Kourrem_ ,” and she reached out and grabbed Kourrem, dragging her close and holding her tightly, crying against the healer’s shoulder.

 

                “Come and help me lay her out,” Kourrem said, stroking Lady Cythera’s hair rather awkwardly and getting  spiked by a hairpin for her pains. “Prince Jonathan and King Roald shouldn’t see her as she is now.”

 

**xxii.**

                It was a small cortège that followed Queen Lianne’s body to the Black God’s Temple for the last rites and funeral orations: only her son, her husband, her brother, and both her nephews. Cythera of Elden, the lady-in-waiting dearest to her and the last to leave her side, walked ahead of her casket as it was born through the city by three men in Naxen and three in Conté colours, carrying a candle to light the Queen safely to the Peaceful Realms. A guard of the King’s Own lined the route. Alms were given to the poor, a meal in memory of Queen Lianne.

 

               It was almost exactly as the Queen had asked.

 

              “You should have walked with me,” Lady Cythera said later, casting aside her thin black gauze veil and the wreath of white flowers that had sat on top of it. “It’s what she wanted. I can’t believe Master Oakbridge disrespected her wishes – or that Jonathan _let_ him!”

 

               “Much can be forgiven of a grieving man,” Kourrem said, and fingered the fringed edges of her black scarf.

 

**xxiii.**

                “You don’t think I was responsible, do you?” Duke Roger said, focussing all of his considerable charm on Kourrem. “Here. Have a drink. The wine is more than decent. Irenroha has good taste.”

 

                Kourrem stared the hand holding out an elegant glass flute of wine into nonexistence. She wished she hadn’t come to the party, but Lady Cythera was very firm on the subject of acquaintances in Corus who weren’t Prince Jonathan’s raucous inner circle, and after all it was only a small party. “My religious commitments forbid me to, your grace. Furthermore, I am on duty tomorrow morning.”            

                “Oh? Sad.” The Duke waved away a server offering him elegant tidbits of lemon and pepper-drenched smoked salmon. “I understand my aunt was the first patient you lost.”

 

                “I have lost many patients before,” Kourrem said tartly, smoothing the mourning black of her dress under her fingers. “Few of them died with as much courage and dignity as the Queen did. Many died more unexpected deaths.”

 

                The Duke looked satisfied. “So you understand that I was not involved. It’s good that people should know that.” His eyes twinkled- no, gleamed, as if he expected her to be taken in by his false admiration. Kourrem was insulted. “Your reputation for probity and professionalism precedes you, Mistress Kourrem.”

 

                Kourrem felt a muscle twitch under her eye, and suppressed it with an effort. “But not as much as my head-scarf, your grace.”

 

                “No,” the Duke agreed, regretfully. He nodded at the one she was wearing – sheer embroidered grey silk, a gift from Lady Cythera that Kourrem personally felt was very daring. “I’m sure your hair is lovely, from the lock or two I’ve seen – true black, very rare in these parts. It’s a mystery to me as to why you bother to cover it.”

 

                Kourrem took in a sharp breath, and turned a violent shade of puce. She opened her mouth to give him an Alanna-sized piece of her mind, and then shut it again.

 

                “ _Clever_ girl,” Duke Roger said admiringly, smiling at her as if she were a ten-year-old pupil who had just produced her first passable ward. “ _Very_ well done.” _I could kill you without breaking a sweat_ , said his deceitful sapphire eyes.

 

                “Thank you,” Kourrem said through gritted teeth, and glared back: _if you did, I would haunt you for the rest of your unnatural life, you heart-rotten son of a sand-devil._

 

                The Duke laughed, and changed the subject.

 

**xxiv.**

                Kourrem, having finished her shift at the Healers’ ward at dawn, went down to the stables to intercept Raoul, who she knew would be fresh back from the desert with news of the Bloody Hawk. She walked briskly, and with the Healer’s badge prominently displayed on the bodice of her dress; even after all this time in the Palace, people were apt to mistake her for a servant of some kind if she was on her own.

 

                She stepped into the great paved courtyard with its huge iron-bound gates opening into the road through grassy paddocks and the Forest, and saw that Raoul wasn’t down yet. It was his habit to exercise his horses at about this time: she’d wait for him.

 

                She crossed the courtyard to the two boxes that Raoul’s horses – those that he kept with him in Corus – occupied, and fished in her pockets for something to give them. Eventually, she came up with scraps of block sugar that she usually fed to Neal when he was growing more than usually obnoxious and had to be pacified, and gave them a couple each, stroking their noses and talking to them softly in her own language.

 

                A sudden clatter startled her, and she turned abruptly to see the king and a select few of his men coming into the great courtyard. She curtseyed deeply, and he acknowledged her gracefully. Like Queen Lianne, she liked him despite the fact that he was the northern king and not known for his clemency and kindness to her people: his dignity in the face of tragedy commanded her respect. And although he had let Master Oakbridge have his way over Kourrem’s non-appearance in the funeral cortège, he had made sure that the small personal bequest the Queen had made to her – sketches of Tortall and other lands from her private collection and a brooch of garnets and amber, gifts which had wholly startled Kourrem – reached her.

 

               Still, courtesy notwithstanding, it was a very odd time for the king to be up and riding. Kourrem pretended to be examining a darned patch in her apron (ripped by a tenaculum, cursed thing) to hide her puzzlement, and a growing heavy feeling of foreboding. Grooms ran to fetch and saddle horses, while others went to open the great gates, and in surprisingly little time – far too quickly for Kourrem’s sluggish, frozen brain to understand what frightened it – the king and his men were gone, riding at an easy canter towards the Forest.

 

               Kourrem shuddered all over, and shut her eyes as an image of a yawning gorge swept over her. Suddenly terrified, she whirled as if to run away and came face to face with Raoul.

 

               “You’ve got your head in the clouds,” he observed, having overcome his uncertainty around her. “I’ve been calling you from all the way across the courtyard. What’s got into you?”

 

                She grabbed the front of his tunic. “Is it usual for the king to ride out at this hour?”

 

                “No,” Raoul said uncertainly. “He was a keen hunter in my father’s day, but not any more. Kourrem, you’ve gone porridge-coloured.”

 

                She released his tunic, staring at him and seeing only the gorge. “Go to Prince J0nathan.”

 

                “ _What_?”

 

                “Go to Prince Jonathan. Stay with him. I think – I think-“ Her voice faltered and choked, still childish when she needed it to be adult and rational.

 

                “It can’t be,” Raoul said with conviction, catching her drift. “Kourrem, nothing will happen to the king. He was raised on horseback – he’ll never fall.”

 

                She shoved him, angered into uncharacteristic loss of self-control. “You don’t _know_ that. You don’t see what I see. Go to Prince Jonathan, now, before I turn you into an apple and feed you to Fury! I must find Duke Baird. He’ll know what to do.”       

 

**xxv.**

                “We came too late, your grace,” the groom explained to Duchess Wilina, face streaked with tears. “His Grace sent us, to tell ’em about the vision so’s they’d turn back, but it was too late... the king fell...”

 

                Kourrem put a cup of sedative into his unresisting hand, and Duchess Wilina stood over him while he drank it. The king’s body lay in state in the Chapel of the Ordeal, until some more fit place could be found for it, but Kourrem couldn’t rid herself of the vision of that gorge, yawning deep and wide, half-hidden by greenery and a fallen tree. She was a good horsewoman, though not familiar with the Forest or the skills required to ride in it, and guessed that it would be a difficult jump. One that a horseman as skilled as the king was very capable of making – but one that would be easy to misjudge, fatally easy.  Especially if one meant to misjudge it in the first place.       

 

                Her stomach lurched violently, and she pressed her lips together. It had been a quick death, his neck broken cleanly – although the same could not be said for his horse... She wondered if he would have done it, if he had realised that his horse would suffer.

 

                Duchess Wilina gave her the kind of look she used on Neal when he was being outrageous. “Are you all right, Kourrem?”

 

                “Well enough,” Kourrem said, smiling tightly, “considering.” She poured out another dose of the sedative and held it up. “I should take this to Prince Jonathan.”

 

                The duchess stiffened. “He wasn’t left alone, was he?”

 

                “No,” Kourrem said dryly. “I sent Sir Raoul to him the moment I had any idea that something was – happening. And Duke Baird did try to give him this, but it was thrown back at him.”

               

                The duchess quirked an eyebrow. “How do you know he won’t do the same to you?”

 

                “Because he knows it won’t wash with me.” Kourrem said grimly, hoping that Prince – no, King – Jonathan was indeed aware of this, and opened the door.

 

                “Good luck,” Duchess Wilina said, sounding wearily amused.

 

                “Thank you,” Kourrem said politely, and went.

 

                She found the door to Prince Jonathan’s rooms closed and locked, and therefore knocked on it.

 

                “No!” Sir Gareth shouted from within. “His Highness is not receiving visitors!”

 

                “Duke Baird sent me,” Kourrem shouted back.

 

                A swarm of mutterings emanated from the other side of the door. They seemed largely to consist of an argument between Sir Gareth and Raoul over whether it was appropriate to let Kourrem in, so she took a hand.

 

                “My lords, I can either blow this door down, or walk through it! Which would you prefer?”

 

                There was another agitated conversation, which resolved itself in Raoul saying “You don’t know Kourrem, Gary, she will do it,” as he opened the door.

 

                Kourrem thanked him sweetly, and asked where Prince Jonathan was.

 

                “Ah,” Raoul said, and looked sheepish. “Well. He’s locked himself in his bedroom.”

 

                “ _Has_ he,” Kourrem said ominously, speaking over Sir Gareth’s whole-hearted condemnation of Raoul’s lack of discretion.

 

                “And he might throw that back at you,” Raoul informed her.

 

                “He will not,” Kourrem said with decision, and went over to the first door she saw. She pushed it open, realised that firstly, if it was open it was not Prince Jonathan’s bedroom, and secondly, it contained a bathtub, and beat a dignified retreat to attack the other door. This put up resistance.

 

                “Go away, Gary!” Prince Jonathan bellowed, adding several unedifying allegations phrased in language worse even than Ishak’s.

 

                Kourrem thought for a moment, and then treated him to a considered denunciation of his behaviour towards an innocent woman in her own language, which made Raoul choke and Sir Gareth demand, in a frantic whisper, to know ‘what that unnatural girl had said now’. Kourrem ignored both of them, waiting impatiently.

 

                The door swung slowly open, and Prince Jonathan faced her. If she had blamed him for his attitude before, she didn’t now; against her will she felt very sorry for him. He was agonisingly pale, his eyes reddened by tears and full of the kind of grief that rends and destroys.

 

                “I should’ve known it would be you,” Prince Jonathan said bitterly, stamping back into his own room. Kourrem stuck her foot between the doorjamb and the closing door, insinuated herself into the room, and thoughtfully jammed the door open. “Anyone else would take no for an answer!”

 

                “You do Alanna an injustice, your highness,” Kourrem told him severely, following him. He sat down on his bed and ignored her, like a sulking boy. “Duke Baird sent this for you. It will compose you.”

 

                “I don’t want it,” Prince Jonathan muttered.

 

                “It’s good for you.”

 

                “But _I don’t want it_.”

 

                “I concede that you don’t want it, your highness, but you _need_ it.”

 

                “I won’t have this!” Jonathan bawled, suddenly red-faced and furious. “I have authority here, and I won’t stand to be  - _fussed_ over and – and ordered about! Don’t you know I’m –“ His voice cut off abruptly, and the blood drained from his face. He collapsed in on himself, like a building with poor foundations, and buried his head in his hands.

 

               “King?” Kourrem completed mercilessly. “Not yet. You’re not crowned and you haven’t had your Ordeal thing.” She sat down beside him on the bed, and considered whether or not she should pat him comfortingly on the back, the way some of the other Healers had told her to soothe frightened young patients. It seemed inappropriate, considering that he was a grown man, and – technically – her liege-lord.

 

               “I can’t do this! I can’t!”

 

               “Of course you can,” Kourrem said, in what passed as her soothing tone. Her one great failure as a Healer was her total lack of a bedside manner, which made Duke Baird very glad that she had no intentions of practising as one except in dire necessity.

 

               Prince Jonathan, ignoring her, doubled over and sobbed harder. Raoul, seemingly mortified, disappeared. Sir Gareth shifted from foot to foot.

 

              “There now,” Kourrem said vaguely, deciding that grown man or not she really ought to take steps to console him and therefore rubbing his back with the hand that wasn’t holding the sedative. It didn’t seem to produce any noticeable effect, and she wondered what to do next. “There now.”

 

               Eventually, the tears faded to gasping, and finally dry heaving breaths, as if he’d exhausted himself. Kourrem fished in her pocket for a clean handkerchief, failed to find one, and wiped his face with a corner of her scarf – it was a plain, slightly over-large orange one she reserved for Healer duties as being suitable for being bled on, thrown up on, and wept on, so it ought to do the job. She held the cup of sedative to his lips and told him to drink, and he was too tired not to.

 

               Unwisely, he took the cup from her after a few moments and knocked the lot back. She closed her eyes in resignation, but said nothing.

 

              Prince Jonathan looked at her, suddenly clear-eyed and lucid. “You really think I can do this?”

 

              “Yes, your highness, but I’m not sure why my opinion matters so much.”

 

             “Because you’re harsh,” Prince Jonathan said with an unusual lack of charm, yawned, apologised for yawning, and passed out.

 

              Kourrem pinched the bridge of her nose.

 

             “Was that supposed to happen?” Sir Gareth asked, hovering suspiciously.

 

             “Well, no,” Kourrem said, sliding off the bed and grabbing Prince Jonathan’s ankles. “But then again, he wasn’t supposed to drink it in two gulps, either. Help me move him.”

 

**xxvi.**

                There was a sharp knock on the door, and Kourrem got up from her seat next to Neal and Talin, who were lying on the floor, engaged in pitched battle with a set of toy soldiers,  and went to get it. Raoul lurked awkwardly outside the door.

 

               “Raoul!” she said, surprised but not displeased to see him.

 

               “Kourrem,” he said, and bowed vaguely in Duchess Wilina’s direction. “Your Grace.”

 

               Kourrem glanced back at Duchess Wilina, who was holding baby Jessamine and rocking her gently; she quickly calculated the desirability of Raoul, six foot something of usually quite graceful bulk which would instantly become nervous and clumsy faced with something fragile, sharing space with a very small baby. She stepped outside, pulling the door to but not quite shutting it behind her. “Is something the matter?”

 

              He shook his head. “No. I’m just – I’m going to fetch Alanna. The last word of her was she was making for Sarain, and that was a few months ago. Myles seems to think she’ll want to take ship home instead of travelling overland, given the unrest in Sarain. I’m to go along the coast looking for her, as far as Port Udayapur.”

 

             “Oh,” Kourrem said, and made an intelligent guess. “Prince Jonathan needs her?”

 

             Raoul gave her an unusually searching look. “I know you’ll keep it quiet, but Jon wants her for King’s Champion.”

 

             Kourrem choked on a mouthful of air. She understood enough of the Court by now to know that that was a key appointment. “A brave move.”

 

             “He needs people he can trust,” Raoul observed, and Kourrem could see a worried line between his eyes that hadn’t been there last week. “That’s why it’s so good you’re around. You’re so apart from all the –“ he waved his hands vaguely –“the politicking, and the intrigue... It’s good. Anyway, I wanted to ask if you had any messages for Alanna. I know you were her student.”

 

             Kourrem was struck dumb. “I...” She glanced down in unaccustomed confusion, and wished fervently for her face-veil, which she hadn’t missed for months.

 

             Raoul looked thoroughly alarmed by this turn of events, which was totally unlike the Kourrem he knew and was slightly frightened of – or would have been, if she hadn’t been half his height and slight enough to snap. “Are you all right?”

 

             Kourrem took a deep breath, staring hard at worn stone flags and promising herself  that she wouldn’t cry. She knew Raoul; she trusted him; and if all else failed she could threaten him with being turned into a mouse. “I am not sure... Alanna would want to hear from me. I have not done... what she expected.”

 

            "What?” Raoul said, thoroughly puzzled.

 

             Kourrem clicked her tongue in irritation. When Jonathan had told her that he hadn’t informed Raoul of her history, merely that she was a Bazhir shaman in search of new knowledge and further training, she had welcomed the half-truths for their anonymity; now they were just inconvenient. “I wasn’t Alanna’s only pupil at the Bloody Hawk. There were two of us – three, but one died... while training.”

 

             “I’m so-“

 

             “ _Shut up_! I am explaining!  Of the other two, myself and... and Kara, I was the more decisive. So I was meant to be head shaman. But I was too young. And there was no real place for me, especially after Kara married the headman. So I... I left.”

 

            Raoul was silent for a long time. Kourrem examined the floor in minute detail, and jumped when Raoul clapped her shoulder, just as he would have done to Sir Gareth, or to Sir Douglass or Sir Sacherell, only rather more gently. “Alanna never blames anyone,” he said. “Not for long. Oh, she might throw a fit and singe your eyebrows off with her blasted temper, but she doesn’t _stay_ angry except with traitors and cheats – and you’re neither.”

 

           “Well. Well, then,” Kourrem said, and stared at the floor some more and twisted the fabric of her dress in her hands. She looked up at Raoul. “Send her my love and duty, won’t you?”

 

**xxvii.**

                Kourrem filed quietly out of the hall with the other students, clutching her pen and ink-bottle in hands sticky with sweat and shaking with over-use.

 

                “ _Mithros_ , I’m glad that’s over,” one student observed, laughing in relief and joking with his friends; Kourrem, lacking friends among this busy crowd of mage-students, none of whom had concerns at the Palace or reasons to visit the Healer’s Wing, merely laid her stationery down on the nearest table and flexed her fingers until the knuckles clicked.

 

                That was it, then, she thought, picking up her things again and claiming her bag from the porters at the gate of the University. Her last exam. No more practicals, no more vivas, no more... anything. If she wanted, she could leave right now. Her credential, whatever grade it was, was earned.

 

                Owen, Duchess Wilina’s long-suffering footman, met her at the gate. “Did it go well, Mistress Kourrem?”

 

                “So far as I can tell,” Kourrem allowed cautiously, mind thrown into confusion as she realised she couldn’t leave yet. Much as she’d become personally attached to Duke Baird, Duchess Wilina, and their brood – especially Neal, the little monkey – those were ties she could leave behind, but she had... unfinished business here.

 

                Yes, Kourrem thought to herself as she walked briskly along, matching Owen’s stride. ‘Unfinished business’ was exactly the word to describe it. It felt wrong to leave Duke Roger to his own devices in Corus; there were other and much greater mages in Corus than Kourrem, but none watched him so closely. She would see him dead before she would leave him to murder Prince Jonathan – as she had no doubt he would do – and wreak havoc on Alanna’s country.

 

                She stopped abruptly as Owen did, the sudden halt throwing her out of her vague, scandalised realisation that she was hanging around in a city she was none too attached to for the sake of a bunch of _northerners_. “What is it?” she asked sharply, knowing that Owen’s understanding of the city was much better than hers.

 

                “Listen,” Owen said simply, and Kourrem did as she was told.

 

                She could hear a noise that she would call roaring, if it weren’t for the fact that it was so quiet – a great bellowing at a distance, as of a crowd shouting. She shivered instinctively. “That’s the marketplace up ahead, isn’t it?”

 

                “Yes,” Owen answered, and looked around quickly. Kourrem copied him, and noticed that the street was almost empty – a curious thing, for noon on a market day.

 

                “Come on, mistress,” Owen said grimly, and started off in the direction of a small and disreputable-looking alleyway. “That there’s a riot waiting to happen. The Masbolle townhouse’s closest, and the Masbolles are Duke Baird’s close kin. They’ll shelter us.”

 

                “A riot?” Kourrem muttered to herself, following Owen as he darted right into another road, one in which the roar of the crowd, or the riot if Owen was right, was fainter.

 

                She blinked, and an image painted itself on the back of her eyelids in vivid colours: Jonathan, struggling with his fine black horse in a crowd, fit to be swept away by a tide of humankind.

 

**xxviii.**

                The next time Kourrem came face to face with Thom, he was being hauled into the Healer’s Wing by Sir Gareth, hissing and spitting like a cat throwing a tantrum.

 

                “Well, Lord Thom,” Kourrem said, enjoying the chance to use her most patronising tone. “And what have we done to ourselves now?”

 

                “We’re pissed,” Sir Gareth said grimly, “saving your presence, mistress.”

 

                “Not at all, Sir Gareth. Lord Thom, sit down.”

 

                Thom, whose eyes were bloodshot, whose face was gaunt, who smelt strongly of spirits, stared blearily at her. “Oh,” he said, and his lip curled. “ _You_.”

 

                “Yes. Me. Duty Healer Kourrem bint Kemail.” Kourrem let her fingers drift over the shelves of remedies stocked in readiness for the more common Court ills, and selected a tisane that would stave off the worst of the crashing hangover Thom was due and sober him up. She flicked her fingers, and the small fire lit under a kettle of clean water. “Can I ask, my lord, what you have been drinking?”

 

                Thom declined to answer.

 

                “Anything he can get his hands on,” Sir Gareth growled, dumping him on the made-up bed reserved for very temporarily indisposed patients. “If it wasn’t for Alanna – but you understand.”

 

                Kourrem nodded, to show that she did understand, although she wasn’t sure how Sir Gareth came to know she did. The kettle went off, whistling like it was possessed, and she wrapped a rag around the handle and carefully poured the boiling water into a beaker with a small gauze packet of the tisane. She set it on the desk to brew, and leaned back against the desk, examining Thom critically. Some nagging instinct was telling her that there was more to this than just a drinking bout.

 

                She tapped her fingers against the desk, and pursed her lips. Thom stared sullenly back at her, his lip cruelly twisted, his eyes full of low malice.

 

                “Well, go on,” he said nastily. “I know you’re thinking it. The Trebond boy’s out of his depth. Power, but no judgement. Talent, but no –“

 

                “Alcohol tolerance?” Kourrem suggested crushingly, picking the gauze packet out of the brewed tisane and throwing it into the fire. She passed over the tisane. “Drink up.”

 

                She waited until Thom had finished the whole thing, then said: “I told you once that if you did anything to hurt your sister, your life would not be worth living.”

 

                Sir Gareth stirred in surprise in the corner, but she ignored him. Thom nodded.

 

               She felt her lips curl with a nasty smile of her own. “Well, it isn’t. Is it, my lord?”

 

               Thom flung the beaker at her.


	3. Chapter 3

**xxix.**

                When Alanna returned, Kourrem was anxious, if not actually terrified, to know what her reaction to Kourrem’s new life would be. But Alanna seemed barely to register her presence, wrapped up in watching out for Jonathan, the tattered remains of some kind of entanglement with the Shang Dragon, Roger’s re-existence, a burgeoning love affair with George Cooper (who was disreputable, but who Kourrem approved of on the whole) and the Saren refugees she had brought home with her, one of whom was a princess, and the loveliest woman Kourrem had ever seen in her life.

 

                Naturally, Jonathan fell head-over-heels in love with Princess Thayet, which meant that Raoul, Gary and Alanna heard all about it, which meant – because Kourrem had become the go-to completely confidential, always available healer for King Jonathan’s intimate friends – that Kourrem heard all about it. After a very, very short period of time indeed, Kourrem succumbed the urge to bang her head against her desk and curse Princess Thayet under her breath for the boredom Kourrem was being subjected to on her behalf.

 

                And all the time, while the Tortallan court worshipped Princess Thayet, and King Jonathan held his privy councils to try and keep his hold on an uneasy nation, Kourrem watched Duke Roger, and worried.

 

                Unlike Alanna or Raoul, Kourrem was no warrior. But she had been brought up dependent on others’ whims and fears, and she knew in her bones how to read a situation – had learnt to feel an oncoming storm before learning to control even a tenth of her Gift. She knew that the dark, sooty smoke of danger was settling over Corus, clinging to everything it touched, and it made her skittish, not knowing when or where the final blow was going to fall.  Alanna was here now, ready and willing to act as Jonathan’s sword-hand and wary of any danger to him – but when Kourrem, in one of the two or three brief meetings they had, expressed the belief that something was brewing and Duke Roger was behind it, Alanna simply nodded and said she knew.

 

                Kourrem should have been comforted by the fact that older, wiser, more powerful heads were focussed on protecting Tortall and Jonathan, but she felt a little discarded. Alanna didn’t even seem to register Kourrem’s existence, let alone care that she’d abandoned the Bloody Hawk.

 

                It was humbling to think herself of so little importance. Kourrem swallowed the shame and guilt of it, and kept doing her job.

 

 

 

                The city itself felt much as Kourrem did. As the days to the coronation raced by it stirred uneasily, hostility thick in the air, looking for a target. Kourrem soon stopped leaving the palace, and began to feel the weight of suspicious glances even within its walls, more than she’d had to cope with since she’d first arrived.

 

                Kourrem set her jaw and pretended it did not anger her that because she was foreign and looked it, she registered as _dangerous_. She knew not everyone thought like this – Cythera found excuses to spend increasing amounts of time with her, encouraged in part by Gary, who probably thought Kourrem the safest of the late Queen Lianne’s satellites – but to walk down the corridors of a place she had lived and worked and shown her loyalty to for months on end, and catch whispers and wary looks...

 

                Kourrem set scraps of paper on fire and pretended they were Roger of Conté, which gave a surprising amount of temporary relief, and when she discovered that Princess Thayet’s bodyguard – who was not Bazhir, but looked foreign enough to get spat at and insulted – spent a lot of time on the practice courts and came away with a corresponding number of bumps and scrapes, she pledged herself to heal any and all of her injuries for free.

 

                “You don’t have to do this,” Buriram Tourakom told her, watching narrow-eyed as Kourrem straightened and healed her broken fingers. “Not for free, I mean. We’ve got plenty. We don’t need charity.”

 

                “This is not _charity_ ,” Kourrem snapped. She didn’t know where Princess Thayet and Buri’s money came from, though she suspected Sir Myles and Alanna of acting as their backers, but she could see clearly enough from the well-made clothes they wore and the quality of Buri’s weapons that they weren’t badly off. If she had wanted to charge them, she would have done, and she didn’t understand why Buri didn’t see that.   

 

                Buri’s mouth twisted between a grimace and a grin. “Just checking.”

 

                There was a pause. Kourrem finished off her work on Buri’s fingers, and released them. “Try those out.”

 

                Buri wriggled them around a bit, inspected them carefully, and then nodded sharply. “Good as new, thanks. Can you defend yourself with a knife?”

 

                “No,” Kourrem said, taken slightly aback.

 

                Buri squinted at her, mouth drawn into a tight, wary line. “I could teach you. In solidarity. If you see what I mean.”

 

                “I do,” Kourrem said, feeling a sense of actual kinship, a sense of _this person is like me_ with someone for the first time since Queen Lianne breathed her last. “See what you mean. And that would be... very acceptable.”

 

                “Good,” Buri said, with a sharp nod, and put a knife into Kourrem’s hand. “Your first lesson starts now.”

 

**xxx.**

                “Don’t you hate it,” Buri said to her one day, conversationally, as she taught Kourrem to fall in a corner of the gardens, “when people talk about foreigners, and then say oh of course I don’t mean _you_.”

 

                Kourrem dropped onto the grass again. “Yes,” she said.

 

                “Good. That was perfect. Now do it again.”

 

                Kourrem got up. “You’re thinking of Gary, of course.” She repeated the trick.

 

                “Yes. Not quite as good as last time, Kourrem, concentrate.”

 

                Cythera, who was sitting nearby with Thayet and embroidering some kind of night sky blue material, made a soft noise of distress. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it like that.”

 

                Kourrem concentrated on producing another perfect fall, not trusting herself to speak on the subject, and Buri made a small rude noise that probably didn’t carry to Cythera’s ears.

 

                “I can’t speak for Kourrem, of course,” Thayet said smoothly, without appearing to extricate herself from a book on Tortallan social reformers of the last century, “but I imagine, Cythera, that it is very difficult to take the sentence ‘I don’t know, all these Bazhir coming into the city, I know Jon says they’re loyal to him but can we really trust them, you know what they’re like’in any way other than it is said.”

 

                _Tactfully said_ , Kourrem thought, and deliberately fell forward again.

                “But,” Cythera said.

 

                Kourrem dusted off her knees, readjusted her headscarf slightly, and looked her in the eye. “But what?”

 

                Cythera couldn’t meet her eyes.

 

                Kourrem sighed. “I have a shift beginning in half a bell.”

 

                “Next lesson, tomorrow, same time, same place,” Buri said, absent-mindedly  juggling with three of her knives and making Thayet raise an eyebrow.

 

                “You cut your wrist open and I will _hurt_ you,” Kourrem said, in much the same tone.

 

                Buri grinned sharply, and all three knives made their way into the trunk of a nearby tree. Cythera jumped and Thayet rolled her eyes. “Nice job on the falling, Kourrem. You learn quickly.”

 

                “Thank you,” Kourrem said dryly. “So do you.”

 

                “It’s a survival trait.” Buri crossed to the tree, and started wrenching the knives out, one by one. “Off you go. I’m sure there are coughs and sniffles for you to fix up.”  
  
                “All of them less boring than your broken fingers,” Kourrem retorted, said goodbye to Cythera and Thayet, and went away in the direction of the Healers’ Wing.

**xxxi.**

                The invitation to Sir Myles’ townhouse was an unexpected one, and Kourrem dithered for some time over whether to accept it or not; then decided that she owed a duty to Sir Myles because he was the father of her teacher, and she should probably attend, so she went to Duke Baird and asked for an escort.

 

                Duke Baird, wrestling with some estate affair that his agent had referred to him, was less than communicative. “Yes, I know of the invitation. Sir Myles assured me it was in hand,” he said, and then asked Kourrem for an opinion on the Dowager Duchess Turomot’s terminal cancer, so Kourrem had to be satisfied with that.

 

                The evening of the invitation, she returned to her rooms to tidy herself up and change her dress into something a little smarter, and found the Shang Dragon lounging by her door, dicing with Buri.

 

                “Excuse me,” she said, unsure whether to be outraged or bemused.

 

                Buri unfolded herself from the floor. “Oh, there you are. You’re late.”

 

                “All Nonds are hypochondriacs,” Kourrem said. “What are you doing here, Buri? And you, sir?”

 

                “Not sir, _Liam_ ,” the Shang Dragon corrected, and grinned at her, with the look of an affable battle-scarred lion. “We’re your escort.”

 

                Kourrem blinked and gaped for a few moments while she tried to work out what to say.

 

                “Shut your mouth, you’re catching flies,” Buri said unkindly, putting her dice back into one of her endless series of pockets. “Hurry up.”

 

                “Hmph,” Kourrem said, whisked herself into her rooms without inviting either of them in, and quickly changed into a dress more suitable for visiting a noble’s residence, washed her face, tore a brush through her hair, pinned it up again and put on the pretty grey scarf she refused to stop wearing because Duke Roger had insulted her while she wore it, then changed her canvas physician’s bag for a smaller and more suitable receptacle. She presented herself outside within five minutes, slightly flushed and prepared to receive Buri’s complaints about her tardiness with a glare.

 

                Buri made the necessary complaints, and then passed her a knife and told her to put it in her bag. “You worry too much.”

 

                Kourrem rolled her eyes, but accepted the knife gratefully, and – barring a few curious looks from the Shang Dragon, who evidently didn’t understand the security worries of a much smaller and weaker Bazhir woman – they were off. The Dragon and Buri set a brisk pace, making Kourrem worry a little that she would not be able to keep up with them; but she certainly appreciated the wary attitude they brought to the journey, and she couldn’t deny that she felt safe around them.

 

                Sir Myles’ townhouse was brightly lit, and the footmen evinced no surprise when asked to open the door for a Bazhir, a battle-hardened warrior, and a Saren fighter, but let them straight in and informed Buri that Sir Myles was to be found in the large withdrawing room. Apparently this meant something to Buri, for she led them unerringly to a spacious, wood-panelled room, full of light and of people Kourrem knew. Lady Cythera, Princess Thayet, Alanna, Sir Myles, an older Tortallan woman with hazel eyes and a kind face who somehow recalled Alanna’s lover George to Kourrem’s mind... Kourrem paused on the threshold, uncertain where she fit in, and received a healthy shove in the back from Buri.

 

                “Get in there,” Buri said mercilessly, and Kourrem took a step or two forward, still uncertain.

 

                 Sir Myles came forward, and took both her hands in his, grasping them firmly; he was much as Kourrem remembered from the adoption ceremony and his visit with the Bazhir, deceptively shabby around the edges and sleepy-looking. “Well met, Kourrem bint Kemail. Welcome to my home. May I introduce Mistress Eleni Cooper?”

 

                Nerves jangling, Kourrem bowed politely to the older Tortallan woman, who, on closer inspection, seemed very maternal. “Pleased to meet you, Mistress Cooper.”

 

                She received a curtsey in return, and a smile, and then her attention was abstracted by Alanna hurrying over and saying with some agitation: “Kourrem, they have _dress fittings_ planned.”

 

                “ _What_!” Kourrem exclaimed,  and saw Sir Myles and Mistress Cooper share a slight, amused smile.

 

                “Dresses,” Alanna repeated, “for the _coronation_.”

 

                “But I’m not going,” Kourrem said feebly.

 

                Alanna stared at her with those famous violet eyes, and the equally famous expression in them that said that ‘No’ was not an acceptable answer. “Rubbish. Of course you are, if I have to drag you, because I’m _not_ going through this alone and neither is Buri.”

 

                “No,” Buri chimed in, sitting on a table and swinging her legs. “Definitely not.”

 

                Kourrem gestured at Princess Thayet and Lady Cythera, neither of whom were bothering to hide their smiles. “You have them!”

 

                “They _like_ this kind of thing!”

 

                “They’re actually _invited_!”

 

                “ _So are you_!” Alanna folded her arms. “I checked with Jonathan. He put your name down personally, after I told him you were supposed to walk in front of Queen Lianne’s coffin and didn’t get to. Even Master Oakbridge won’t dare to take it off.”

 

                Kourrem was both struck speechless, and full of feelings she wasn’t entirely sure how to expres. She licked her lips, and the thready, regrettably emotional words escaped from her: “How did you know about that?”

 

                “I told her,” Cythera said, getting up from her seat. She held the same night-blue material she had been working on the previous week, folded neatly, and she looked a little nervous herself. “I also took the liberty of having a dress made up for you, in thanks, because you have done a _lot_ for me, Kourrem, and others, little though they may recognise it. I _think_ it will fit... and I hope you will like it... and of course, there is still time for alterations to be made.” She held the folded material out to Kourrem. “This goes with it. The dressmaker hadn’t the faintest idea where to start, and, well – the last one I made you was a success, wasn’t it?”

 

                As if in a trance, Kourrem took the material, and unfolded it gently. She discovered it to be a headscarf a little like the one she wore now, made of beautiful, high-quality Carthaki silk, embroidered round the edges with gold and black birds of prey. She looked up at Cythera, who looked hopefully down at her, and found that words were completely inadequate.

 

                Tactfully, Sir Myles and Mistress Cooper involved the Shang Dragon in a completely different conversation at the other end of the room.

 

                Cythera enveloped her in a hug. “You should be there,” she said into Kourrem’s ear. “You deserve to be there. We won’t have it any other way.”

 

                Kourrem, still vaguely stunned, hugged her back and stared over her shoulder at Buri _. I wasn’t expecting this,_ her eyes said.

 

                Buri grinned affectionately back at her, and her smile said, _That’s because you always have to think the worst of people, you idiot._

 

                Princess Thayet gave everyone a moment to bask in the glow of emotional catharsis, then stood up and cleared her throat quietly. “I believe the dressmaker is waiting just across the corridor,” she observed.

 

                “Of course,” Cythera said practically, disengaging from Kourrem, and helping Princess Thayet shepherd those in need of fittings out of the room. (Buri, joking and mocking, dragged Alanna with her.)

 

                Kourrem grabbed Cythera’s arm and pulled her aside just before they went into the other room. “Cythera. Thank you.”

 

                Cythera smiled, half-sadly. “It’s only what you deserve.” She hesitated, and squeezed Kourrem’s hands. “I know how you hate to be beholden to people. This... Kourrem. This is payment of a debt.” Her fingers tightened on Kourrem’s, almost crushing. “These last few months would have been so much worse, without you.”

 

                “I believe I can say the same to you,” Kourrem said, taking refuge in a formal tone.

 

                She knew by the look in Cythera’s eyes that she wasn’t fooled in the slightest.

**xxxii.**

                “I think something will happen,” Buri said, flipping a knife on end. “And I think it will happen at the coronation.”

 

                Kourrem hesitated, pen hovering over the paperwork she was finishing off, then nodded in agreement. “The coronation falls on the night of a full moon.”

 

                “Is that bad?”

 

                Kourrem thought about all the magical forces that might or might not be harnessed at such a propitious moment, and also about Alanna who had the Goddess for a patron and a will of iron. “It depends. I also suspect the Dominion Jewel will be involved.”

 

                “The Jewel? Really?” Buri took out two more knives, and started to juggle. She had told Kourrem that George had taught her the trick in Port Caynn, which Kourrem did not consider a recommendation.

 

                “Must you do that in my office?” Kourrem demanded, in longsuffering tones. “Yes. The Jewel is the ultimate expression of a ruler’s connection to the land. No challenger worth his salt would hesitate to make use of it, so it is to be hoped that Jonathan will be equally ruthless.”

 

                “Ruthless?” Buri almost missed her catch.            

                 

                “From what I understand of the academic papers that are being rushed out even now, the Jewel draws its power from the land itself and its potential for life.” Kourrem dipped her pen in the ink, discovered that that did not improve matters, and passed it to Buri to trim. “Using it could prove... risky.”

 

                “I see.”  Buri passed the pen back and continued juggling, and both of them were taken by surprise when Neal barrelled into the room.

 

                “Kourrem, play with me! Pleeeeeeeease? _Ooh_.” He stared, with a child’s instinctive fascination for danger, at Buri’s knives flashing in the air. Buri intercepted an evil look from Kourrem, and hastily put them away.

 

                “Do it again, do it again!” Neal cried, bouncing up and down.

 

                “No,” Buri said, and then glanced at Kourrem. “At least someone isn’t worried.”

 

                “Nothing worries him,” Kourrem said wearily. “Neal, go away for five minutes, I’m busy.”

 

                “I’m booooored.”

 

                “And I’m _busy_.” Kourrem jabbed her mended pen into the inkpot. “Go away before I have Buri throw you into the pond.”  


                “But I can’t swim yet!”

 

                “Exactly,” Kourrem said ominously, and Neal giggled and ran away.

 

                Buri looked after him from where she sat perched on the windowsill, kicking her feet absently against the wall. “The Duke should send his children out of Corus.”

 

                “He can’t,” Kourrem said, finishing the last sentence of her report and signing it with a flourish. “Not without appearing disloyal. And the Queenscoves are a family of some import – it matters that they should be seen to trust Jonathan.”

 

                Buri grunted. “Politics.”

 

                “Politics,” Kourrem agreed, and sighed.

 

                Neal shot back into the room. “Will you play with me _now_?”

 

                Kourrem glanced out of the window at the hot summer sunshine, and prayed that Jonathan had the strength to hold Tortall together, if only for the sake of children like Neal. His family’s need to appear loyal made him a fine target, and surely Jonathan owed him protection for that?

 

               Kourrem sighed. It wasn’t about what Jonathan _should_ do so much as what he _could_ do. “Fine, Neal. What do you want to play?”

 

**xxxiii.**

                Kourrem waited discreetly in a back row of the Chapel of the Ordeal while Jonathan underwent the Ordeal of Kings, a small votive candle burning with a saffron flame in front of her. Others were present, of course; Duke Gareth, ramrod-straight and patient as death with a similar candle burning rose-pink in front of him, Gary and Raoul, fidgeting, Alanna, visibly suppressing the urge to pace and probably too worked up to light a candle as a mute prayer for Jonathan’s safety without blowing the candle to pieces.

 

                Kourrem wondered where Princess Thayet was, and then realised that notions of propriety wouldn’t allow it, and that she was almost certainly keeping faith with Jonathan so discreetly that no-one but Buri would notice. If she’d been betrothed to him already, her presence would be encouraged, even required, but as it was...

 

                Kourrem stayed only long enough to assure herself that Jonathan was alive and well and didn’t require the intervention of a more thoroughly trained healer than Alanna; then she slipped out, and sent a note down to the Bazhir men of the King’s Own, holding their own vigil as their duties permitted it. _The Voice is well_ , she wrote, and signed it _Healer Kourrem bint Kemail of the Bloody Hawk_ , a signature significantly longer than the note itself – but some of them had known of the way her tribe had shunned her when she was young, and it did no harm to remind them that things had changed.

 

                When Kourrem next saw Jonathan, she curtseyed to him as she would to a King for the first time. And the last. It wouldn’t do to let him get a swelled head; that sort of thing was inconvenient in a prince, but dangerous in a king.

 

**xxxiv.**

                Kourrem dressed herself slowly for the coronation, allowed Duchess Wilina to exclaim over how lovely she looked and compare seating arrangements with her, and then made her way to Cythera’s rooms. Gary waited outside, dressed more smartly than Kourrem had ever seen him, looking as nervous and edgy as Kourrem felt, and Kourrem nodded to him.

 

                “Shouldn’t you be with Jonathan?”

 

                “He’s having a moment of meditation,” Gary said, cleared his throat, and added: “To himself. I think he needs a little peace. Raoul’s watching over him.”

 

                Kourrem nodded again, and raised her voice. “Cythera! Are you coming?”

 

                “Yes!” Cythera called back, and the door opened. Cythera emerged, dressed in lavender, looking beautiful and charming, the face of a fresh, new Tortall celebrating a joyous day – but Kourrem was sure that it was no coincidence that lavender was a half-mourning colour, and that the gold and enamel lily brooch from Queen Lianne’s legacy to Cythera had been fixed in her hair, the focal point of blonde waves and knots of lavender ribbon. It wasn’t as if Kourrem didn’t have the Queen’s brooch of garnets and amber pinned to the bodice of her blue gown.

 

                She waited for Gary to finish kissing Cythera’s hand and compliment her, thankfully returning some colour to her pale cheeks, and then they were standing there, the three of them, not particularly skilled warriors or particularly brilliant war-mages, restless in the knowledge that the blow they’d been expecting for months was probably about to fall.

 

                “Are we sitting together?” Cythera asked, her fingers still wound around Gary’s, even though – in strictest propriety – she should have let go long ago.

 

                “You and I are,” Kourrem answered for Gary. “Next to the Naxens, as Queen Lianne’s former attendants.” She paused. “I’m not sure how Master Oakbridge worked that one out.”

 

                Gary laughed, but the sound was uncertain. “With a lot of very strong suggestions from Jon. We should go.”

 

                They walked together down the palace corridors, which buzzed with the work of the coronation and nobles all heading for their assigned seats. Kourrem caught a glimpse of Alanna, preoccupied and frowning, and of Thayet and Buri – Buri saw her too, and tapped her left wrist meaningfully.

 

                Kourrem tapped her left wrist in return, where the full sleeve concealed a wrist sheath and a knife from Buri’s collection that Buri had brought her, late the previous night. _I don’t believe in taking chances_ , Buri had said, and Kourrem’s stomach jumped uncomfortably as she thought of the chance they were all taking. What would Kara say? Or Halef Seif, or Ishak?

 

                They would probably all call her a fool, Kourrem thought, sitting down on the end of the row, an Eldorne guardsman muttering his excuses as he sat down next to her – undoubtedly part of some noble’s retinue, shoved in at the last minute. She was a fool, for risking herself for northerners, even for Alanna and Jonathan – especially for Alanna and Jonathan, who had so much to protect them.

 

                Well, then – Kourrem was a fool. This was no secret.

 

                “If we can just get through this,” she said to Cythera, and the Duchess of Naxen, that terrifying battleaxe, looked down the row at her and nodded grimly.

 

                The coronation ceremony moved slowly, but punctually. Jonathan was appropriately regal, and any tension in the room could easily have been put down to the wonder of the moment as Jonathan was crowned and took possession of the Dominion Jewel. The colours of his Gift and the Jewel’s magic flooded the room, almost blinding Kourrem.

 

                Then all Chaos broke loose, blood-red Gift threaded in, Liam took up a position in front of Jonathan and Alanna sprinted from the room, and Kourrem came back to herself to realise that Cythera was screaming and the Eldorne guardsman, slightly encumbered by the panic around him, was drawing his sword.

 

                Kourrem stabbed him in the leg, and then, for good measure, she set him on fire.

 

**xxxv.**

                She never told anyone how many people she killed that night, Tirragen and Eldorne uniforms on faceless men falling under saffron fire. She shepherded Cythera and the Duchess to where Thayet and Buri and Mistress Cooper held a clear space as a sanctuary, ferried the Queenscove children and their mother to safety one at a time and tore halberds and ceremonial swords from the walls so that the weaponless might fight.

 

                The Battle of the Hall of Crowns, they called it. A heroine, Raoul called her, when it was all over and he could clap her on the back and tell her the Bloody Hawk had a daughter to be proud of.

 

                That was not what Kourrem remembered in her dreams. In her dreams, Liam Ironarm’s life poured out of him from endless arrow wounds, and Kourrem’s Gift was too depleted to save him. In her dreams, Thom of Trebond paid a higher price for his treachery than even she would ever have wished on him. In her dreams, Thayet fell, and Buri, and Duke Baird. In her dreams, Neal, Graeme, Talin, Jessamine were pulled from her arms and murdered. In her dreams, she remembered her healer’s vows, and hesitated too long. In her dreams, she lost, and some of her dreams were true.

 

                She never told anyone how many people she killed that night, because she could never remember. Not even in her dreams.

               

 **xxxvi.**        

                The dust settled thick and heavy over Corus, the choking soot of a pyrrhic victory, of shock, of disbelief that Jonathan had actually _won_. Kourrem saw it in all their faces, in Duke Baird’s, in Cythera’s, even in Jonathan’s, and she knew that when she looked in the mirror it was there on her face too. The only antidote was to keep working. Preserve some form of normality, and one day, when you wake up, everything will feel all right. Or at least, such is the theory.

               

                But some things defied normality, even for Kourrem, and some people had particular griefs. Thom of Trebond’s pyre was lit alongside that of Master Si-cham, in the Mithran temple. Kourrem had no particular allegiance to Mithros, saving the greater part of her prayers for the Goddess and the Black God, but she felt a loyalty to Alanna, and a certain amount of guilt for Thom. So she sat in the very back row of an echoing temple for a poorly-attended service, and when it was over and the priests filed out, leaving the last embers of Lord Thom and Si-cham smouldering, she joined Alanna beside the pyre.

 

                George stood with Alanna; he turned, murmured something to her that Kourrem did not catch and did not want to catch, then kissed her cheek tenderly and left, with a nod for Kourrem. Kourrem nodded in return, and hung back for another moment, before coughing politely to let Alanna know she was there.

 

                “Kourrem,” Alanna said dully, half-turning to meet her. Her eyes were reddened, thick shadows beneath them, and her face was covered in tears. Kourrem produced a handkerchief and wiped her face gently.

 

                Alanna touched her cheek with shaking fingers. “You put off your veil.”

 

                “I haven’t worn it for months,” Kourrem said, making allowances for the mental processes of the bereaved, and put the handkerchief to Alanna’s nose. “Blow. I stopped wearing a full face veil when I left the desert. It attracts too much negative attention.”

 

                “Do you miss it?”

 

                “Not any more,” Kourrem said, “and as Raoul points out whenever he has the chance, the fewer obnoxious comments are made to me, the fewer people I turn mute for disrespecting my tribe.”

 

                That made Alanna laugh a little, and she looked at Kourrem, exhaustion plain in the sag of her shoulders. Kourrem looked back, realising, for the first time, how very young Alanna had been when she came to the Bloody Hawk – how very young she still was.

 

                “You’ve grown up,” Alanna said finally.

 

                Kourrem merely smiled. “As well for me that I have.”

 

                “I’m proud of you.”

 

                Kourrem’s heart almost stopped. “Really, Alanna? After I abandoned my tribe? Kara? Halef Seif?”

 

                “Not everyone’s path lies in the direction expected of them,” Alanna said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve and glancing unsubtly at her twin’s glowing remains. “I of all people should know that.” She sighed. “I understand why you did it. And I’m proud of what you are, not what I thought you would be.”

 

                “I think I might not be the only one who’s grown up,” Kourrem said, finding another handkerchief and passing it to Alanna.

 

                Alanna smiled through tears. “I was angry when I heard at first. When Raoul told me, in Port Udayapur.” She coughed and scratched her head. “I may have thrown a few things and shouted at Raoul for not stopping you.”

 

                “So long as you’re not angry now,” Kourrem said, unsurprised by this revelation, but feeling sorry for Raoul in retrospect.

 

                “No. Far from it.” Alanna chuckled, and Kourrem can hear an unfamiliar note of self-deprecation in her voice. “I understood a little, once I stopped shouting long enough for Raoul to explain to me a little of what happened at the Bloody Hawk. I can’t believe the bastards sidelined you.”

 

                Kourrem hummed, and cast a glance at the pyres. “I’m sorry about Thom. I remember...”

 

                “Ishak,” Alanna completed, and Kourrem knew that she’d been thinking the same thing herself. Clever boys, both of them; clever boys with something to prove.

 

                “I tried to warn him,” Kourrem said.

 

                “Many people did,” Alanna said quietly, traced the marble of the benches, and watched the smoke wind towards the roof and disappear.

 

                She waited until Thom’s ashes had ceased to glow and the sky outside was almost completely dark, and Kourrem waited with her. Then she led Alanna out of the temple and back to Sir Myles’ townhouse, where Thayet and Mistress Cooper took charge.

 

                “I’m tired,” Alanna told her, standing on the steps.

 

                “I can see that,” Kourrem said. “You should go home. To the Bloody Hawk. They’ll take care of you.”

 

                “Only if you come with me,” Alanna said, closed her eyes, and staggered sideways into Mistress Cooper’s capable hands.

 

                Thayet slipped out onto the step. “I never thanked you, Kourrem. For what you did in the Battle. You were so brave-”

 

                “No thanks necessary,” Kourrem said so quickly it hurt, because all she knew of that battle was her failures, and walked away hastily into the Corus darkness, a soft saffron flame to light her way.

 

                She hadn’t given Buri’s knife back, and it remained, strapped against her wrist, a constant and comforting weight.

 

**xxxvii.**

                Returning home was... peculiar. She felt like an honoured stranger, less a part of their daily life than Alanna, or even than Thayet and Buri when they arrived. Halef Seif looked her in the eye; Kara’s joy was only tempered by the fact that Kourrem shared a tent with Alanna, not with her, and refused to be drawn on how long she planned to stay. The children who had been babies when she first became shaman of the Bloody Hawk were afraid of her, and the women spoke but little to her. She had almost lost the knack of weaving, but a few days’ practice brought it back. She made bandages, miles and miles of bandages, and told Kara that you could never be too prepared.

 

                Umar Komm and the men of the shaman school respected her a little more now. She taught classes on healing, and practical war-magic to the girls who didn’t want to be coddled. She did not put her face-veil back on, although she spent the first few days feeling like a traitor; she would not be reduced to the frightened and sidelined Kourrem bint Kemail who had lived here before, and she made her unveiled face a symbol of that, even though that was not what it had arisen from. Some of her pupils copied her, and while it created unease, the sands did not part and swallow them all up, which Kourrem considered a victory.

 

                She did try the veil on again once more, though, in the privacy of her tent with Alanna. Alanna watched her put it on, look at herself in a small round mirror Cythera had given her, and take it off again.

 

                “I don’t recognise myself,” Kourrem said aloud, wrapping the mirror in the veil and packing it away, and Alanna merely nodded.

 

                Kourrem left as soon as she could.

 

**xxxviii.**

                She returned to Corus, this time with a merchants’ caravan, and paid her way as security for the caravan; she caught six thieves, and provided advance warning of two bandit attacks and a sandstorm, which set her up with a very useful bonus of eight gold nobles. Duke Baird and Duchess Wilina welcomed her with open arms, and she didn’t even bother to deny that she was glad to see them again. She had a special hug for Neal, and for Cythera, Gary and Raoul, when they came and all but broke down her door. She was welcomed at the Healers’ Wing, where they could always use someone who knew and understood the place for temporary work, and she settled back into life in Corus without even blinking.

 

                Her careful enquiries for a travelling companion led her to write to Alanna, and then to George, who provided a man called the Shang Falcon with a letter of introduction to her.

 

                Because Kourrem had never met a Shang with any sense of timing whatever, he arrived well before Kourrem had finished her shift at the Healers’ Wing, and got tangled up in the royal guards, who were still twitchy after the coronation. A message was sent up to Kourrem, who blasphemed, threw her gloves down, and headed for the sentry post in question.

 

                The Shang Falcon was a tall man, in perhaps his mid-thirties, tanned brown with inscrutable eyes and scarred hands. “I’m travelling east,” he said, by way of introduction. “George Cooper tells me you’re looking to go east too.”

 

                “George Cooper tells many people many things,” Kourrem said tartly, opening the letter of introduction he handed her and perusing it briskly. She pursed her lips, and folded it more slowly and carefully when she had finished reading. “Many of the things he tells me about you are good.”

 

                “He says you are Gifted, stubborn, loyal, hardy, sharp-tongued and determined to shake the dust of Tortall from your feet,” the Falcon said, with a tiny quirk that might have been a smile. He held out a hand. “Joesh.”

 

                Kourrem considered the outstretched hand for a moment, then gripped it firmly. “Kourrem.”

 

**xxxix.**

                She met with Joesh several times, and decided she could trust him well enough to travel with him – and if not, she could always turn back and leave him behind, or strike out on her own. They sorted out practicalities of how they would travel and planned a route; Kourrem saved money from her work at the Healers’ Wing and her bonus from the caravan, on the principle that it was better to have it than not.  Joesh told her of Kylaia al Jmaa, the Unicorn, with affection in his voice as for a daughter; she’d been his first pupil, the best part of ten years ago, and (Kourrem gathered) an immense risk to take. She spoke to him of Liam Ironarm’s death, and told him – when asked – of Alanna the Lioness, who the Dragon had said might have made a Shang, in another life.

 

                He would do, Kourrem decided, and overrode objections from Gary, Cythera, Thayet, Jonathan, and a surprising number of people who seemed to find room in their extremely hectic lives to worry needlessly about Kourrem. The Falcon looked on in amusement, and said that he hoped she was this efficient in handling the recalcitrant, irritating and dangerous people that they would undoubtedly meet on the road. She told him to go away and put his affairs in order.

 

               

                They were gone by September, when the first leaves in Corus were turning gold and falling, when the sky’s blue turned sharp-edged with cold, and Kourrem felt nothing more than an urge to move on.

 

**xxxx.**

                She carried the maps Jonathan had given her and spread them out at every evening halt, annotating, changing, marking useful waypoints. The Falcon looked on in mild interest.

 

                “You have had these – how long?”

 

                “Two years,” Kourrem said, “or several lifetimes, depending how you measure it.”

 

                She wasn’t used to camping, but she got used to it, and even to like it. They moved at a brisk pace, the Falcon on his horse, Kourrem on one Raoul had chosen for her, a beauty of a mare, and Kourrem felt after the first few weeks as if it wasn’t fast enough.

 

                “What are you running away from?” Joesh asked, halfway through Tusaine.

 

                “Running away?” Kourrem repeated, and was silent for several hours until she came up with an answer. “I’m trying my wings.”

 

                “How poetic,” Joesh said dryly, and pointed out that they were about to be accosted by bandits.

 

**xxxxi.**

                The further east they went, the more refugees they saw. K’miri or part K’miri, in general, fleeing west now that the warlords had hunted Kalasin’s get out of her own country, now that there was nothing left to remain for. Kourrem’s sympathy was aroused by a people with no country, and she healed them and snapped at them and made them fires with saffron Gift, and sent them west with stories of Buri and Thayet so long as they told her stories of the homes they had come from. Their mages taught her K’miri spells and she taught them Tortallan magic in return, and she noticed how much of what she learnt was battle spells, how many of the weather and illusion and scrying spells had been left behind and lost.

 

                She learnt as she travelled, and what she learnt did not always make her glad.

 

**xxxxii.**

                Through Tusaine, into Tyra; to the river-sea-city itself, to spend almost a month wandering around it, seeing its ostentatious loveliness, its richness and its luxury, learning it, hearing the news spoken in so many more languages than Common. Beyond the Voice’s reach, a loss that unnerved Kourrem and knocked her off balance for several days, until she grew accustomed to the empty half-hour in her evening. Into Maren, to experience personally the troubles of a country where the nobles are too powerful, and see the great fields of grain tended by slaves. Through Berat, an ugly city to Kourrem’s eyes, full of ill-treated Saren refugees; she walked through their camps with Joesh by her side and talked of Buri and Thayet so that their eyes would light up while she healed their wounds, made the girls pregnancy charms, warded their shabby homes against fire and robbers and left them as protected as she could. Through Berat, and north, to hit the Great East Road and go beyond, where Joesh would not tell her.

 

                “It is not that it is a secret,” he said in his precise way, “except that it is a secret.”

 

                “How illuminating,” Kourrem snapped.

 

                “It’s fortunate that you have no sense of direction,” the Falcon said mildly.

 

                He took her to the Shang’s school, where she was laughed at and accused of being a second Kylaia until she talked to them of the Dragon, and told them of his last battle. He introduced her to Kylaia, not so very much older than herself, a Carthaki woman made of steel who joined them for a while, then left them as they reached the Shappa Road, and she went south.

 

                Kourrem insisted that they go to the bank of the Shappa itself, and look down into Sarain.

 

                “I wish we could go further,” she said to Joesh.

 

                Joesh frowned. “I would not advise it.”

 

                Kourrem remembered Alanna’s stories of Sarain, remembered the little snippets Buri had let loose about fleeing Sarain. “No. Me neither.”

 

                “You hesitate.”

 

                “I remember what Thayet told me about Sarain, when she was younger. The beautiful things about it.” The lowland forests, the highland plains. K’miri warriors in enamelled armour, great felt tents that keep out the cold; the most beautiful horses Thayet had ever seen, eagles that did hunters’ bidding, and great fires and companionship. The dark, peaceful temples, and the chattering cities; banners made of prayers and endless skies.

 

                “It was a lovely country once,” Joesh agreed.

 

                “Never again?” Kourrem questioned, feeling slightly wistful.

 

                “Probably not, no,” Joesh said, and wheeled his horse about. “So. These are your wings we’re trying, Kourrem. Where next?”

 

                Kourrem rubbed her hands against the encroaching cold, and luxuriated in the feeling of a hundred choices to make, a hundred places to go, and nothing and no-one pulling her back. “North,” she said at last. “Let’s winter in Galla.”

               

 **xxxxiii.**  

                They found a place for the winter in a medium-sized merchant’s town; somewhere where Kourrem could sell charms and scry futures and heal a little while Joesh taught nobles’ and merchants’ children to fight and kept half an eye out for another apprentice. And it was well enough, and Kourrem learnt to speak in a Gallan accent and follow Gallan politics, and enjoyed her first truly cold winter even when it froze her fingers and toes and put complaints into her mouth. She learnt to skate and sledge, and had snowball fights which she lost, and searched out local hedgewitches to acquire new knowledge and share her own.

 

               Desperate to share her delight with a more receptive audience than Joesh, she wrote screeds to Kara, to Buri, to Alanna, to Cythera, describing everything she had seen and the people she had met. As an afterthought, she copied up her notes on the new incantations, charms and scraps of lore she had learnt in a fair hand for Alanna and Kara, asking that they pass them on, to Duke Baird and the school and whoever else was interested. She sent her letters out with the sparse messengers that would take them without expectation of a response, and was surprised when she finished her letters by how many people she had to mention in them. Only Kara didn’t write back, and Kourrem missed her voice in the few letters she received that winter, in among stories of Sarain and bandit-hunting in Tortall from Buri, Cythera’s updates on Tortallan gossip and politics, Alanna’s remembrances of her own travels and practical advice. Kourrem treasured the last of these most for their final proof that Alanna accepted her choices, but she couldn’t help feeling that she would have welcomed a similar token from Kara.

 

                Spring came, and with it, the itch in Kourrem’s feet. The roads opened, and the sky lightened, and the snow melted; and Kourrem had learnt everything she could here. Time to move on.

 

                “Oh, what now,” Joesh sighed, returning from his latest lesson to find her poring over her maps on the kitchen table.

 

                “Come _on_ ,” Kourrem said scornfully. “As if you aren’t as anxious to move on as I am.”

 

                “Lies,” Joesh said comfortably, even though Kourrem knew that he’d been permanently packed to move for the past two weeks. “What were you planning?”

 

                “Let’s go west again,” Kourrem said. “I want to see the horse fair in Cría.”

 

**xxxxiv.**

                She never dreamed of this when she talked with Ishak of running away, when she fled the Bloody Hawk, a confused and betrayed child. She never dreamed of anything a tenth as wonderful as this.

 

                She isn’t quite free. She still has Kara, and the Bloody Hawk; the memory of Ishak and of Lianne, and the Battle of the Hall of Crowns; Gary, and Cythera, and the Queenscoves, and Alanna and Jon and Raoul. She isn’t free, while she carries all these things with her.

 

                But she’s more than halfway there.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Sand in the Wind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7730074) by [Chestnut_filly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chestnut_filly/pseuds/Chestnut_filly)




End file.
